Unwrapped
by the classicist
Summary: Christmas 1923: Edith finds herself in a compromising situation. Anthony acts as you'd expect. Andith, Christmas-sy if you squint. Update: Now a filing cabinet for Andith one-shots of all shapes and sizes...
1. Unwrapped

The painting was the most beautiful thing Anthony Strallan had ever seen.

The artist was clearly awfully talented. He focused his attention on that, to avoid having to look at, or think about, the rest of the painting. The specifics. The… _Edith_.

Edith, all pale limbs and glimmering eyes.

Edith, stretched out langurously on a green velvet sofa, iterated perfectly in oil paint.

Edith, _naked as the day she had been born_.

Her skin, so pale, glowing against the green of the sofa. Her face, turned so boldly towards the audience, as if she were looking _him_ directly in the face. Her breasts, soft curves that he'd only ever seen through the covering of corset and gown. Her legs stretched sinuously over the cushions, one arm tucked back behind her head, short red-gold hair just brushing her shoulders in a series of wanton curls.

Briskly, he covered the painting up again, heart thumping, mouth dry. "Stewart!"

"Sir?"

"Something for you to wrap here." Sir Anthony turned away, good hand bent behind his back. "If you wouldn't mind."

"Of course not, sir. Might I ask…?" Stewart let the end of the sentence dangle in the air.

"Just something I… picked up earlier." Hastily, his master turned back. "I'll address it."

"Very well, sir."

* * *

"What on Earth do you mean, you've _sold_ it?"

Edith's hand clenched around the counter, eyes wide with panic. Opposite her, the art gallery owner - all smoky eyeshadow and _chic_ art-silk dress - looked thoroughly unimpressed. "The painting was sold yesterday, madam - "

"To whom?" Edith interrupted. Her heart thumped painfully against her breastbone.

The other woman stepped back, folding her arms. "I'm afraid I can't tell you that, madam."

"But I - "

The gallery's door opened, its bell jingling, and another customer entered. The gallery owner raised a cold eyebrow. "_If_ you'll excuse me, madam…?"

Blindly, Edith nodded and turned and stumbled out onto the pavement. She felt sick. Somewhere in London, there was a nude portrait of her. Somewhere in London, someone was looking at her, _like that._

What would happen if that someone recognised her? Recognised that they were in possession of a portrait of an Earl's daughter in the altogether? She could see the headlines now. She could hear her father's roar of fury, her mother's exclamation of horror. _Her life wouldn't be worth living._

"Well, did you get it?" Michael's hand on her elbow made her jump, angrily.

"God, Michael!"

He stepped back a touch, ducking his head to look her in the eye. "What is it, darling?"

"The gallery sold it." She swallowed. "Your little friend wasn't so _discreet_ as you thought him."

Michael sighed. "He's a student, living on boiled eggs and cabbage. I suppose he didn't feel he could pass up the opportunity."

Edith ran a frustrated hand through her hair. "If - if my family sees that _damned_ portrait - ! Oh, God, I should _never_ have sat for it in the first place - "

Coaxingly, Michael slid an arm around her waist and pressed a kiss to the side of head. "Look, darling, let's go and have lunch somewhere, hmm? What about that little Italian place in Soho? After some of Gennaro's carbonara and a couple of glasses of wine, you'll have all of this in perspective and - "

"In _perspective_?" Edith exclaimed, pulling away from him. "If my father gets wind of this, he'll lock me up and throw the key away. This could _ruin_ me!"

"Darling - " Michael tried, but Edith was already walking away.

"Just go away, Michael. Just _go away_."

* * *

"Milady?"

Edith jumped at the soft, polite knock at her aunt's drawing room door. She'd spent most of the afternoon curled up here, chewing at her nails and fretting. Not that it had helped. After four hours, she still had no idea what she was going to do. Relying on Michael was clearly going to get her nowhere. Harassing the art gallery staff was only going to end with her in a prison cell, judging from the reception she'd had that afternoon.

Dimly, she looked up as Kate, the maid entered. "Parcel just arrived for you, milady. Delivered by hand, too." The girl smiled. "Looks like an early Christmas present."

"Oh?" Edith watched silently as the maid laid it down on the table before her - a large, rectangular parcel, wrapped in brown paper and string. A folded piece of notepaper was slotted under the string. A ball of lead sank into her stomach. Kate curtsied. "Will there be anything else, milady?"

Edith shook her head. "No, thank you, Kate."

Edith tugged out the note with hesitant fingers and opened it. The handwriting was shaky, but still perfectly recognisable.

_Lady Edith - Forgive me for taking the liberty, but I believe that you would prefer to have this returned to your possession. A. P. S._

She opened the parcel with shaking fingers. Sure enough, the painting was there - what she had hoped and feared.

_He had seen it._

He had seen her like this - naked and exposed for all the world to look at - _and he had sent it back to her_.

Angrily, she brushed away sudden tears. Why should she be sorry? It was her body, wasn't it? She had a perfect right to use it as she saw fit - whether that involved being painted in the nude or not.

But _Anthony_ had seen it. God, what must he think of her? And… how had he found it? Had he looked at it? Of course, he must have done - at least enough to realise that it was her. A shiver - not an entirely unpleasant one - ran through her at the idea of him looking at her, seeing her naked like that, in a way that should be reserved only for a husband, or a lover.

Quickly, she pulled the brown paper over the canvas again and bore it from the room. In her own chamber, she pulled open the bottom drawer, shoved aside piles of silk and lace lingerie, shoved the painting in, recovered it and slammed the drawer shut again, her heart hammering.

* * *

Anthony Strallan's town house was in the very middle of Upper Belgrave Street, the sort of house that looked as if it would stand for centuries. Edith hovered outside for a good quarter of an hour, pacing up and down along the opposite side of the road, before she finally plucked up the courage to cross and knock at the door.

Stewart opened it. "Lady Edith!" His eyes widened with astonishment, quickly hidden. "Can I help you, my lady?"

"Y-yes, Stewart." Edith stepped forwards, into the warmth of the hallway, before Stewart could protest. Left with no choice, he closed the front door. "Is Sir Anthony at home?"

"I - that is to say - my lady, I - "

"Take Lady Edith's coat, Stewart," came a tired voice from the library door.

Stewart, relieved to have had responsibility wrested from his control, helped Edith to remove her coat, while the lady herself looked up at the man who, three and a half years' earlier, had jilted her at the altar. He'd lost weight. He'd come back from France on the lean side, of course, ravaged by illness and injury, but this was something else. He might slip through a set of railings, she thought, if the need should ever arise. His height, moderated only by the slight stoop of his shoulders (legacy of so many days spent bent over books) only accentuated that. His hair was still thick, although much greyer than it had been, and while his face was a little more lined that it had been when last they had seen each other, his eyes were still that same piercing, aching blue that haunted her dreams. The injured arm rested in its accustomed black silk sling across his tweed jacket, open today over a jumper of reddish-purple wool and a soft shirt.

"Will you come through?" Anthony asked quietly, stepping back. Hesitantly, Edith followed him. As she passed him in the doorway, he added, "Lady Edith will be joining me for tea, Stewart."

"Very good, sir."

Anthony shut the library door behind him with a quiet snap and stood watching Edith with an expression she recognised all too well - wary and awkward, trying to gauge her own feelings. "Th-this is a nice room," she offered, searching for something to distract her. Slowly, she took a circuit of the room, pretending to admire the pale green walls, the velvet drapes, the highly-polished mahogany furniture, the comfortable sofa in front of the fireplace. "Very you." Still he said nothing, moved not a jot.

Edith gave up.

"You saw the painting," she murmured quietly.

Finally a movement. Anthony bowed his head, biting his lip. "I did."

The floodgates opened. Edith came towards him, and took his good hand in both of her own, before he could protest. "Th-thank you for… for sending it back to me." Bravely, she added, "I - I suppose I ought to repay you, for whatever you had to lay out for it."

"Not at all." Politely, gently, he extracted his hands from hers. "Consider it… a gift."

A little stiffly, Edith insisted, "I'd much rather pay you for it."

"And _I_ would much rather forget about the whole thing," he confided quietly. Behind him, the door opened and Stewart entered with a polite clearing of his throat, bearing the tea tray. "Won't you sit down?" Anthony asked, his voice much more certain now that he had the rules of polite society to guide him once again.

Hesitantly, she made her way to the sofa and perched on the edge of it. Anthony took the seat at the far end of it, and they both watched as Stewart arranged the cups and teapot and the hot water and the milk - neither of them took sugar - and a plate of sandwiches and dainty cakes. This done, he asked, "Will there be anything else, sir, my lady?"

Kindly, Anthony shook his head. "No, thank you, Stewart. We'll ring if we require anything further."

Edith was struck by the sudden absurdity of it all. _Sir, my lady. We_. It felt as if she had slipped, like Alice, into some sort of strange parallel universe, where Anthony had not left her, where he had stayed and married her and they lived in this lovely, sturdy house, and Stewart brought them afternoon tea every day.

Stewart left, shutting the door behind him again with a quiet snap. Anthony poured the tea and passed her her cup in silence. Somewhere, distantly - the hall? - Edith heard a clock chime the quarter-hour.

"I'm not ashamed of it, you know," she burst out suddenly.

"Why ever should you be?" His voice was calm and expressionless.

She gave him an incredulous look over the rim of her teacup. "You don't have to pretend to be all worldly and permissive, you know. I'm perfectly aware that there are some things that you're… old-fashioned about." She set the cup down with a snap and busied herself selecting a cucumber sandwich, so that she did not have to look him in the eye. "That - that sort of thing… _nudity_… ought to be reserved for - for marriage."

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him slide closer with a sigh of soft exasperation. "But I'm perfectly accepting of the idea that a woman's body belongs, first, foremost and solely, to herself," he reminded her. "Why should it be any of my business what you do with it?"

"Well… yes." Edith straightened her shoulders. "Good. I'm - glad we understand each other." It _hurt_, that. _Why should it be any of my business what you do with it?_

She could have cried. For so long, she had wanted it to be Anthony's business, what she did with her body, who she shared it with, whose bed it slept in. And here he was, sounding as if he did not care in the least.

Gently, with a touch of humour in his tone, Anthony offered, "I don't imagine that you wanted the artist to sell the painting though."

"No. I didn't, as it happens." Edith tugged her cardigan closer around her. Feeling a sudden need to explain herself, to _absolve_ herself, she confessed, "I… it was a stupid whim, really. Just… having a bit of… of idiotic fun. But if Papa, or Mama, or - God forbid - _Granny_ had seen it…"

"They'd have made life unpleasant for you," Anthony finished softly.

"Yes. You know enough about them to understand that, I think." Her smile was shaky and wry. "So… thank you." She looked up at him. "Why - why didn't you keep it? You could have done, you know. The gallery wouldn't tell me to whom they'd sold it - if you hadn't brought it back, I'd never have found it, never have been any the wiser that _you_ had it."

"_Keep it_?" he echoed. "My dear girl, I am at least capable of _pretending_ to be a gentleman."

"Anthony…" she tutted.

"I didn't think I could trust myself, if you must know."

"T-trust yourself?" she blinked up at him, and Anthony ached. "With what?"

Inwardly, he shook his head. Was it really possible that she was so innocent, that she didn't understand? "With having you - with having any reminder of you - in the house." He swallowed. "I thought I would go mad, knowing that I could look upon you any time I wanted, knowing that it would make me the worst kind of lecher if I did…" He looked bleakly down at her. "I would have tortured myself and dishonoured you, and neither was acceptable."

There was silence for a moment. Edith's gorgeous chocolate eyes stared up at him, so trusting, so lovely. "So you sent it back to me," she whispered.

Anthony shrugged. "Well, it is a painting of you. To whom else should I have sent it?"

"Thank you," Edith whispered. "For getting me out of such a horrid scrape." She chanced another, stronger smile. "And there you were, worried that it would be _me_ looking after _you_ all the time."

"Well, perhaps I'd have stopped you from posing nude in front of unscrupulous artists, at least," he smiled grudgingly.

Edith swallowed, letting out a trembly laugh. "Yes. I'm sure you would have done." Her voice broke. "You would have done all sorts of things for me."

"Edith - "

"You _would_ have done," she insisted. "You'd have given me children, and a happy home, and made me so very, _very_ blessed, Anthony."

"Well. That's all in the past now, isn't it?" Gently, he touched her hand. "You've… you've a young man, isn't that right? Mr Gregson?"

"How on earth do you know about M-Michael?" she gaped, astonished.

"My sister sits at the centre of a very wide circle of gossips, and she isn't discriminating in what she tells me." His voice was soft and warm as he added, "Congratulations."

"I see." Edith drew away her hand, tears prickling at her eyes. "Did she - did she tell you he's married? Did she tell you that he's asked me to live with him, out of wedlock? That he wants me to be his mistress? Did she tell you all that, Anthony?"

"_What_?"

Edith exhaled unhappily. "I see that Diana isn't so well informed as she chooses to believe herself."

To her surprise, he slid from the sofa to his knees in front of her, taking both her hands tightly in his good one. "Edith… I - you - you deserve _so much_ better than that. Sweet one - "

"I don't know any more," she whispered, tears starting to run down her cheeks. "I've just been… so very _lonely_, Anthony." She turned sad eyes on him. "When you w-walked out on me, I… I didn't just lose my fiancé, you know. I lost my - my best friend. Michael… fills that space a little, I suppose, or tries to. I don't have anything else left to me."

"My dear…" He released her, reaching up to brush away the tears with his thumb.

"Please don't," Edith wept, but despite her words, her right hand came up to hold his in place against her cheek. "Please don't be kind. I c-can't bear it."

"And _I_ can't bear the idea of your becoming someone's _mistress_," Anthony retorted. "He can't care for you, you know. If he did… if he did, he would _never_ ask you to take such a risk." He frowned suddenly. "Did _he_ suggest this painting?"

Quietly, Edith nodded. Anthony hissed unhappily. "Darling girl, it's one thing to do something like this of your own accord - it's quite another to be… persuaded into it by a man like that."

"You don't even know him," Edith sniffed.

"No," Anthony agreed crisply, "and I wouldn't want to."

Edith nuzzled her face further into his warm palm. "No. I wouldn't want you to, either, really." Her voice dropped and her next words slipped out almost without conscious thought. "You're worth ten of him any day, darling Anthony." She inhaled deeply, and then straightened, standing and leaving him kneeling stupidly in front of an empty sofa. "Anyway… thank you - _again_ \- for the painting. Thank you for everything."

"Will you go back to him, then?" Anthony asked quietly. "Your Mr Gregson?"

"Why?" Edith gave him an arch look.

"Because… " He sighed. "I don't want you taking… unnecessary risks."

"Don't worry, Anthony." Edith forced a smile. "I'm a big girl, and I _can_ take care of myself, despite appearances."

"I'll always worry about you." His expression was apologetic. "I know I've no right to, after the despicable way I behaved, but… there it is. I'll worry until you're happily married to a steady young chap whom I can trust to take care of you. I'll _certainly_ worry while you're involved with a married man who, by all accounts, is perfectly capable of getting you into all sorts of trouble."

"'A steady chap who can take care of me.' That sounds nice," Edith murmured. "I just don't think he exists. Or if he does, he doesn't want me."

Anthony's eyes were very soft and very sad. "Maybe he just… doesn't feel that he's good for you."

"He's _very_ good for me," Edith whispered. "He's kind and clever and sweet and generous. I've loved him since I was a silly nineteen year old and I _still_ love him, and I will be in love with him until the day I die." Her face a mask of tears, she added, "I used to think he loved me, too, and when he was with me, I felt as if I could take on the world. And now… well, you can see the mess I've got myself into, trying to do anything and everything to make myself feel less… less sad and _empty_ inside."

Afterwards, Edith wasn't quite sure how it had happened. All she knew was that suddenly, Anthony's arm was around her, holding her tight against him, his mouth pressed to the top of her head. "You really want me?" he breathed, as if it were the most absurd thing he could think of.

Edith nodded against his jumper. "_Yes_. I want you. You saved me, Anthony. And I know - I _know_ \- there is no one else in the world who could look after me as well as you, who could make me as happy as you could." She tipped her head back. "But if you're still living under this silly idea that you'd be a burden to me, or that you're too old, or too injured, then I'll go back to Michael now and try to - "

Anthony's mouth closed over hers tightly. "Absolutely _not_," he breathed, and there was something in his eyes, something passionate and determined, that made Edith's breath catch in her throat. "I _forbid_ it."

"You do?" Edith whispered, dizzy with his kisses.

"Absolutely and - " (he paused for another kiss) " - categorically." He paused and stroked down her cheek with his fingers. "You _will_ marry me, won't you, my sweet one?"

"Y-you really want to?" Edith returned, leaning up to kiss him again.

Anthony nodded. "You've really left me with no choice, my dearest. For one thing, I'm damned if I'll leave you to Michael Gregson's tender mercies." A slow smile spread across his face. "For another, I absolutely adore you…"

* * *

"What are you doing up here all alone?" Lady Strallan asked, wrapping her arms around her husband from behind. He tilted his head and peered down at her smilingly. "Oh, just looking at this."

Edith looked past him to the bed, where the painting lay across the crimson eiderdown. Her mouth twitched thoughtfully. "It _is_ rather good, isn't it?"

Anthony's good hand came up to cover hers, still linked across his belly. "I assure you, my sweet one, it pales in comparison to the, ah, original."

She squeezed him affectionately. "Flatterer. What shall we do with it?" She smirked, emerging from behind him. "I don't suppose we can hang it in the drawing room, can we? Not if we want to remain in polite society."

Anthony chuckled softly. "'Fraid not, darling girl. And I'm not entirely sure I want anyone else having the opportunity to leer over my wife's lovely body." He raised a wry eyebrow. "I believe that as your husband, I may reserve that privilege for myself." Edith giggled and swatted half-heartedly at his arm.

"I think," Edith said, "that we should put it away somewhere private - and whenever you get maudlin, or start to think that you don't deserve me, we can get it out and remind you of the day you saved me - from ruin, from Michael, from an empty, lonely life."

"Now who's being maudlin?" Anthony asked wryly.

Carefully, Edith twitched the canvas wrappings over the painting again as he came to embrace her, his mouth nestling against that sensitive place just below her left ear. "We've got twenty minutes until tea," Edith observed, turning in his embrace and leaning up to kiss him.

"Oh?" Anthony replied against her mouth, his eyebrow quirking. "What could we possibly do to fill the time?"

Edith's hands were already working at his belt. "Private viewing, my darling?"

"_Perfect_, my sweet one."


	2. The Cuckoo In The Nest

**AN: I've always been a little bit intrigued by the theory that has been outlined by some fans that Edith is Rosamund's illegitimate daughter; here's my brief attempt at exploring such a scenario, set 1912...**

* * *

"The young lady over there, who was talking to Lady Grantham… who is she?" Sir Anthony Strallan tore his eyes away from the strawberry-blonde in the peach frock who had been the object of his gaze for the last ten minutes. He looked down at his companion, a slight frown on his face. "I understood there were only two daughters."

"Oh, there are," smiled Claudia Gervas. "That's Miss Crawley - Miss Edith. A distant cousin of his lordship, and the family." Taking pity, she said, smiling a little mischievously, "Shall I introduce you?"

Anthony ducked his head, flushing a little. "Am I truly so obvious, Claudia?"

Claudia squeezed his arm fondly, suddenly glad that she had managed to persuade him to come with her. "Only to me, darling man. Come along, then."

She tugged him across the ballroom, until they reached the young lady, alone now and hovering on the fringes of the dance floor, an almost wistful look on her face. "Edith, dear?" Claudia beamed. "Hello!"

The young woman turned with a surprised smile and dropped a polite curtsey. "Hello, Lady Gervas. How are you?"

"Very well, my dear. And you look _very_ pretty this evening."

The girl - Edith - blushed. "Thank you. That's very kind of you to say."

"Not at all, my dear, you know that I am _never_ kind." Smoothly, Claudia drew Anthony into the conversation. "Might I present a very dear friend of mine, Sir Anthony Strallan? Anthony, Miss Edith Crawley."

"How do you do, Sir Anthony?" She had, he noticed, the most extraordinary chocolate brown eyes.

"Miss Crawley - a pleasure." They shook hands. "Are you engaged for the next dance?" Sir Anthony asked, and Edith smiled softly inside that here was a man who still spoke as if he lived in the last century. She had not been asked to dance in so very long. No one wanted to dance with poor, plain Miss Crawley, when Lady Mary or Lady Sybil were about. No one except this gentleman, it seemed.

Claudia melted away, her hand lingering fondly for a moment on Anthony's arm as she went.

Miss Crawley gave him a shy smile. "I very rarely dance, Sir Anthony - and I'm not terribly good at it."

Sir Anthony glanced at the dance floor. "It's only a waltz." His smile was soft, kind, encouraging. "Nothing terribly complicated. As far as I understand it, you just need to… hold on."

The girl's face closed up a little. "I… It's very kind of you, but really, you wouldn't enjoy it. I'm sure my cousin Mary would be happy to oblige, though."

"Oh." He frowned. "Well, yes, but… I don't particularly _want_ to dance with your cousin Mary."

Miss Crawley blushed furiously and looked away, embarrassed. "I… I'm sorry. No. Please, excuse me, sir."

Without a backward glance, she hurried away.

* * *

"Was that Sir Anthony Strallan I saw you talking to earlier, Edith darling?"

Aunt Cora looked at Edith in her mirror as O'Brien drew the pins out of her lusciously thick dark hair. It was difficult to read the expression in her eyes.

Edith hesitated. She hated being called up to her aunt's bedroom. It nearly always meant a ticking-off. Added to which, her feet were sore from standing so long at the party, and her eyes itched with tiredness. Longing to go to bed, she answered quickly, "Y-yes, aunt. Lady Gervas introduced us."

"What did you think of him?" Aunt Cora asked absent-mindedly.

"Very pleasant." Well, he had been. She hadn't cut short their little conversation because she had found him _unpleasant_, after all. Quite the opposite. "Quiet, I think," she added, "but not shy."

Aunt Cora gave her a soft, rare smile. "Perhaps I'll invite him again."

Edith's heart gave a happy _thump_, for some reason. "Oh - y-yes, aunt. Please."

"Yes, I think he and Mary would suit." O'Brien finished brushing out her mistress's hair, curtsied, and left in silence. "Don't you agree, Edith?" prompted Aunt Cora, now rubbing cream into her hands

Edith's heart sank - of course, _all_ the best things went to Mary - but she knew what was expected of her. "Um… yes. I'm sure you're right, aunt." She forced a smile. "Will you need me again, tonight?"

Cora shook her head and stood to kiss her cheek vaguely. "No, darling. Run along to bed. You're looking rather tired."

Tucked into her bed, Edith brooded. What was it that was making her so upset and angry, after all? Even if her aunt hadn't wanted to pair Sir Anthony off with cousin Mary, after the way Edith herself had behaved towards him that evening, he certainly wouldn't want to see or speak to her again. She wasn't being cheated of anything.

Perhaps she was angry because she knew her cousin's character so much better than her aunt did. One learned a lot about someone, if one shared a nursery and then a schoolroom with them - there was a whole ten years' of learning about Mary there. Aunt Cora and Uncle Robert only saw the good parts of Mary's character: her determination, her sense of protectiveness over those she liked, her cleverness. It was Edith who bore the brunt of Mary's selfishness, her cruelty, her spiteful wit that seemed to hit home every time, like a poniard wielded by an expert fencer.

Someone like _that_ would surely never be happy with someone like Sir Anthony Strallan. Would they? A man like that, who had seemed so kind and polite and generous, would surely not find anything to attract him in a girl like her cousin Mary, would he?

In the midst of her worrying, worn out by the trials of the evening and her own heightened emotions, Edith fell into fitful sleep.

* * *

"Miss Crawley?" Carson sounded thoroughly astonished as he carried a large bouquet of roses into the drawing room the next morning.

"Yes, Car - oh, goodness!" Edith exclaimed, looking up, her book slipping from suddenly limp fingers.

"_These_ were just delivered by Sir Anthony's man," explained Carson.

"For Miss Crawley?" echoed Lady Mary, with a disbelieving sneer.

However, Edith, for once, barely heard her cousin's unkind words. She stood and gathered her flowers from Carson's arms. "Excuse me," she whispered. "I must go and… put these in some water."

Upstairs, arranging the flowers in a nice vase, Edith came across the card.

_Dear Miss Crawley,_

_I fear that my forward behaviour last night may have embarrassed you. I hope that you will accept these trifling blooms by way of an apology. I have the honour to remain your obedient servant,_

_Sir Anthony Strallan_

* * *

"A note from Downton Abbey, sir," Stewart announced, entering with an envelope on a tray.

"Thank you, Stewart."

_Dear Sir Anthony,_

_Thank you very much for my beautiful flowers. I hope you will forgive my silly rudeness._

_E. Crawley_

The missive was short but sweet - a girl barely out of the schoolroom, composing her first note to a suitor. He shook himself - that wasn't what he was doing, was it? Taking the first tentative steps towards courting the girl?

* * *

"Miss Crawley! Hello!" The voice came seemingly from nowhere.

Edith, tucking her purchases into her shopping basket, looked up in surprise, searching for the voice that had hailed her.

Sir Anthony beamed down at her, lifting his hat in polite greeting. "Hello, Sir Anthony," Edith found herself saying. "Thank you again for the lovely flowers." He didn't need to know that she had pressed a few of them after they had gone over, and that they lived now in the back of her sketchbook, hidden away from prying eyes. She hadn't thought she would see him again - or not so suddenly.

"You're most welcome." His smile widened. "How are you?"

"Very well, thank you." Edith returned the smile, surprised to realise that it was true. Now that the weather was finer, she could be out of doors more often - when she wasn't wanted by her aunt - and that gave her wider scope for avoiding Mary. Consequently, her spirits - always low in winter, when she was confined more often to the house - had improved drastically. "H-how are you?"

"Very well." _All the better for seeing your lovely face again, Miss Crawley_. "Have you been shopping?"

She nodded. "Just a few errands for my aunt and cousins."

"That was kind of you."

Her smile was wry and half-bitter. "Well, I must earn my keep, mustn't I?"

He blinked. "I'm afraid I don't understand."

She looked away. "I'm… what you might call my aunt's companion."

"Yes, a distant cousin. Lady Gervas told me." He hesitated. "You're… an orphan?"

"Yes." Her voice was quiet, but almost expressionless. "My mother died when I was six."

"I'm sorry." When she chanced a glance up at him, he looked it too. As if seeking to sympathise, he added, "I lost mine at ten. We never really recover, not from something so awful, at such a young age, I always think." He shrugged. "Forgive me. That was… rather maudlin."

Miss Crawley's look, however, was full of surprise for such compassion. "No. Not at all. That's just what I feel."

"Of course, my sister and I still had our father."

Edith's smile was wistful. "Mine died before I was born." Quickly turning the conversation, she added, with a brave twist of her mouth, "So you see, Sir Anthony, I'm the poor relation, forever dependent on her richer cousins."

"Not _forever_, surely?" Gallantly, he added, "One day, you'll find a nice young chap to marry and be mistress of your own establishment."

"Yes. I'm sure you're right." She sounded, however, thoroughly unconvinced, for some reason. As she spoke, Anthony felt a drop of rain land on his cheek, and then another in quick succession. Miss Crawley ducked her shoulders and glanced up warily at the threatening clouds above them.

"Oh, goodness. I'm sorry - I had better be going. And it was so fine when I left Downton!"

Anthony put up his umbrella, shielding them both. "Let me escort you to your car, at least."

Miss Crawley shook her head, biting her lip. "I didn't come by car. I walked."

"All the way from Downton?" he blinked, surprised. "It's three miles at least!"

"Three miles of good road," she countered. "Mary had the car this morning." She shrugged. "Anyway, I don't mind the walk."

"Well… let me drive you back." As she looked about to protest, he added, "I _insist_. Please be sensible - you can't possibly walk back in all this, you'll be drenched before you've got halfway and most likely catch your death." True enough, the rain was coming down in stair-rods now, bouncing off the pavement and sending cold splashes over Edith's boots and the hem of her skirt.

"Th-thank you, Sir Anthony. If you're sure it would be no trouble?"

He ensured she was tucked safely under the umbrella, close to his side. "On the contrary, it would be my pleasure, Miss Crawley."

The inside of his car was warm and dry and it was rather cosy to drive along and listen to the rhythmic patter of rain on the roof and Sir Anthony's kind chatter. "Your aunt's invited me to dinner next week," he offered.

"Oh, yes. Something to do with Uncle Robert - a Lord Lieutenant do." Shyly, she added, "I hoped she'd invite you."

"Then you weren't frightfully shocked by my behaviour the last time I was under your aunt's roof?"

She shot him a look full of amused exasperation. "No. It was all my fault. I'm not… comfortable with strangers, generally. I live very quietly, all in all."

"Well, I hope we are not strangers anymore, Miss Crawley."

Downton loomed ahead of them, an oppressive shadow at the edge of her consciousness. He drew up the car and got out with the umbrella, gallantly shielding her to the front door. "Thank you very much for the lift, Sir Anthony. It was very kind of you," Edith murmured as Carson admitted her into the hall.

"It was my pleasure," Sir Anthony repeated. "I shall see you next week, Miss Crawley."

"Y-yes. Goodbye, Sir Anthony."

She went upstairs in something of a daze - just a reaction to getting a little chilled, she was sure. On the landing, she met Uncle Robert. "Was that Strallan's car I saw, Edith?"

"Yes, uncle. We met in the village and it started to rain, so he offered me a lift back." Edith said all of this very quickly, and was already walking past him when her uncle asked, very thoughtfully, "There isn't anything going on there, is there?"

She forced a light laugh. "No. Why should there be?"

His voice was serious, an underlying warning to it. "I think your aunt has him in mind for Mary."

"Yes," Edith agreed, feeling very hollow inside. "I know."

Uncle Robert nodded, satisfied. "Good. As long as… you're aware of that, Edith."

"Mmm. I think I'll have a bath, uncle. It was cold out."

She ran the bath herself, swathed in her dressing gown, dreamily trailing her hand in the water as the tub filled. It would be selfish to call one of the maids away from her duties at this time of day, after all.

At length, she sank into the hot water and let herself drift. Really, Sir Anthony was a very nice man. Very tall and broad, but not in a way that was intimidating - rather, she had felt awfully safe tucked into his side, underneath his umbrella, on the way to his car that afternoon. He had a nice voice, too, and when she had spoken, he had looked at her and listened, _really listened_, to what she had said. In Edith's experience, that was rare. If things had been different, Edith mused, he was the sort of man she might have let herself fall in love with.

But of course, none of that was possible.

She had known, ever since she was a very small girl, that she was different from other children - that there were rules governing her life that did not govern others'.

She and Mama had lived in a pretty little house in Maida Vale, with a cook-housekeeper and a nursemaid. Edith had not known unhappiness in her early life - Mama was so sweet and kind, and Edith had been so very loved.

But there was no Papa, nor any other family, really, and no one ever visited them.

Later, after Mama had died, Edith had grown to understand why. Her Mama had not been married. Edith herself was illegitimate. She was lucky that her richer relations had consented to take her in - that Lord Grantham had consented to pass his sister's only child off as the daughter of distant Crawley cousins, carried off in an epidemic. Lord and Lady Grantham had ensured that she was fed and had a roof over her head, and she could not say that she had not had an excellent education… but sometimes, Edith thought that she would exchange it all for one more long golden afternoon in the sitting room at that pretty little house in Maida Vale, curled up on the sofa, or playing at dolls with Mama.

Marriage - at least marriage in the circles in which the Granthams moved - would be impossible for her. Mary and Sybil would find suitable husbands, and fly the nest, and Edith would repay her aunt and uncle for their extraordinary kindness by staying and caring for them in their old age.

Until now, it had seemed a reasonable exchange. And then Sir Anthony Strallan had walked into her life.

Edith sniffed and tried to pretend to herself that her cheeks were wet because of the steam from the bath.

* * *

The dinner the next week was surprisingly enjoyable - mainly, in Edith's case at least, because Mary had come down with a bad case of influenza the day before and was unable to attend. She was in no danger - Edith was not cruel enough to take delight in the idea of her cousin being _seriously_ ill - but she was certainly too unwell to do anything but sleep and take her meals on trays in bed for a few days. "I suppose," sighed Aunt Cora, exasperated, "that I'll have to place you next to Sir Anthony, Edith dear."

Edith knew why it had been done; Aunt Cora did not wish to risk losing a catch like Sir Anthony to some other unmarried woman, if she were careless about where he sat. Edith was safe, a known quantity, too indebted to the Granthams to dare to steal a beau that had already been marked out for her cousin. Edith knew it, but still could not help exalting in it, at the prospect of a whole evening in Sir Anthony's company.

He was, she found, as a pleasant dinner companion as she might have predicted him to be: attentive and humorous, with that rare skill of being able to set anyone at their ease. They found, as they talked, that they had several shared interests - he was, like Edith, a voracious reader and before the fish course was over, they had swapped several recommendations ("Is _A Room With A View_ really worth it, do you suppose? I so enjoyed _Where Angels Fear To Tread,_ and I'd _hate_ to be disappointed!"), before the arrival of the lamb necessitated him turning to address a few words to old Lady Helen Spalding on his other side. Edith was partnered with Sir Hugh, who was jolly enough - "Goodness me, my dear, you and Anthony seemed to have an awful lot to say to each other! I don't think I've heard him utter so many words together since his wife died!" - and then it was the pudding and he was hers again.

By the time he left, drifting away to his Rolls with the last few stragglers, Edith knew that she had just spent the pleasantest evening of her life. In his company, warmed by his smiles and drawn out of herself by his sympathetic, interested questions, Time itself had seemed to freeze around her, or else to fly by on winged heels. When they had been talking, she had been quite oblivious to everyone and everything else in the room.

She had not thought such happiness existed.

After the dinner party at Downton, Edith and Sir Anthony were very often in company with each other. Lady Gervas invited Lady Grantham and Lady Mary and Lady Sybil to tea. "Oh, and _do _bring darling Edith too!" Lady Gervas had added on the telephone - and then when they arrived, Sir Anthony was there too, and while Lady Gervas gossiped with her aunt and cousins, Edith found herself and Sir Anthony closeted away in a corner, chatting very amiably about some new farm machinery he was installing on the Locksley estate.

The village flower show rolled around, and Edith, who expected to spend the afternoon trailing Aunt Cora, carrying her shawl and nodding politely to whatever was said to her, instead was hailed by Sir Anthony, who, he claimed, knew nothing about flowers. "Would you like to educate me?" he asked smilingly. "Or would you prefer your aunt's company?" As she had suspected, he had been fibbing about his ignorance - and Edith noted afterwards that she had spent more time talking about herself than the flowers - but it had been nice all the same, to feel that someone had wanted her company, had appreciated her opinions. Had cared about her, even just a little.

He was sweet and funny, and he asked her questions not merely to be polite, but because he truly wanted to know what she thought. Edith was flattered and confused and anxious by turns. Eventually, she thought, he would realise what a dull girl she really was, and then she would be left friendless and miserable again. And that, she knew, would hurt her more deeply than she had believed herself to have the capacity to _be_ hurt anymore.

But, on the contrary, as the weeks and months passed, Sir Anthony and Edith's friendship only seemed to be deepening. More and more often, he could be found in Edith's company. He had even started asking her to go out with him: no sooner had he bought a new open-top Rolls Royce than he had asked Edith to go driving with him; no sooner had an antique bookshop opened in York than he had wanted Edith to visit it with him.

"I know you'll be interested in this," he said to her one evening as they sat together on the sofa in Downton's drawing room. He had been invited once again for dinner, and had come through from the dining room as soon as he had been able to escape, making a beeline for Edith's cosy corner. Mary, next to whom he had been sat at dinner, and who had spent all evening in a desperate, vain bid to gain his attention, glowered at them from the fireplace, but Edith did not care. "There's a concert in York next week - only a local orchestra, but it sounds a nice programme. Vivaldi, Bach, a little Handel. What do you say? Shall I get us tickets?"

Edith blinked, and then beamed. "But that would be lovely! I'd enjoy it very much!"

"Excellent." He was thoroughly flushed with pleasure, and that made Edith herself blush, especially when he turned to Aunt Cora and said, "Lady Grantham, you wouldn't have any objection, would you, if Miss Crawley were to accompany me to a concert in York next Wednesday evening?"

Aunt Cora looked not so much puzzled as astonished. Mary looked on the verge of collapsing with shock. Uncle Robert was frowning as if he did not quite approve. Only darling Sybil smiled on them. At length, however, Aunt Cora nodded. "Well… no. I don't suppose that I do. Are you sure that it won't be too much trouble for you?"

"On the contrary," Sir Anthony countered quickly, his voice suddenly a little hard. "It will be the most tremendous pleasure."

Aunt Cora raised her eyebrows as if she could not quite believe what she was hearing. "Edith, you must thank Sir Anthony. How kind of him to offer."

"Yes, aunt," Edith whispered, feeling herself blushing again, but from embarrassment this time.

Still, she went to bed happy, her tummy almost hopping with excitement. As she had waited in the hall to say goodbye to him that evening, he had smiled that soft, secret smile again and said, "I hope you'll dine with me at Locksley afterwards. We'll… make a proper evening of it." The prospect of that - a whole evening of his undivided attention, his smiles, his conversation - was enough to almost completely wash away the sourness of her aunt's words.

Now she realised that, without noticing it, she had begun to hope, these last few months, begun to hope that her life would not be the sad round of drudgery she had expected. Perhaps he might… Perhaps he would… Perhaps he wanted…

Edith closed her eyes that night and dreamed _very_ sweet dreams.

The next morning, however, Uncle Robert entered the morning room, and found Edith there, engaged in a book. "Edith… this concert…" he sighed, without preamble - and then stopped.

Edith forced her voice to be light and enquiring as she looked up and replied. "What about it, Uncle Robert?"

"Well… I worry that you're… giving Sir Anthony the wrong impression."

"I-in what way?" Edith tried to return her attention to her book, but her eyes would not focus on the page, instead flickering back up to where her uncle stood by the fireplace. His kind, solid face melted into an exasperated smile. "He may assume that… he has a chance with you."

Edith gave up all pretence of reading her novel, and set it aside. "I don't think that's it. He's… nice, that's all. I enjoy his company. We… were talking, the last time he came to dinner, and I said that there was no one here who really enjoyed music, and… I suppose, when he heard about this concert, he thought that I might enjoy it." In a voice that even to her own ears sounded as if she were trying too hard to be convincing, she added, "It's all perfectly innocent, I promise."

Uncle Robert frowned slightly. "Mmm. But… be that as it may, you… wouldn't want to lead him on, now, would you? Make him think that any further connection between you both is a possibility?"

His niece's head tipped back, and she swallowed reflexively. "N-no, uncle. O-of course not."

He stood, his smile now satisfied, and squeezed her shoulder. "There's a sensible girl. Then I can count on you to put an end to all of this silly business?"

"Before or after the concert?" Edith asked, her voice sounding strange and unfamiliar to her own ears.

"Oh, after will do." Robert waved a casual hand as he flipped open _The Times_. "It would be rude to cancel on him now that you've agreed to go, I suppose."

"Yes," Edith whispered, feeling, for the first time, that her heart was breaking. "Very rude."

* * *

She had been an idiot. Of _course_ no one in the wide world would allow her, Edith Margaret Crawley, to be so happy. Not for long, at any rate. Perhaps Uncle Robert was right. After all, Sir Anthony was a baronet with a reputation and an estate to care for. He couldn't be careless when it came to choosing a bride, to choosing the woman who would, in the fullness of time, become the mother of his heir. And Edith knew that it would be wrong to allow him to continue to pursue him when she knew herself, in all respects, to be utterly unsuitable as a candidate for either position.

But still, she could not help smarting at the rank _unfairness_ of it all, that she had been ruled out of the running before she had even been born, through no fault of her own. She, who could love him so _very_ well, if only she were given the chance. She, who wanted nothing more than to be allowed to spend her days and her nights at his side, for as long as they both lived.

So it was with muted spirits that Edith dressed herself that Wednesday evening, and went downstairs to meet Sir Anthony. She was quiet on the drive into York, but if he noticed, he didn't say anything. Perhaps he thought her only shy, and _that_ only the result of her inexperience. The concert necessitated, of course, their silence, which was a relief to her. She managed some polite small-talk through the interval, achingly aware every time that he smiled, that before the evening was over, she would have to wound him in such a way that he would never wish to smile at her again.

Sir Anthony's cook, Mrs Cox, was (Edith was convinced) at least part witch. No sooner had they arrived at Locksley, than they were shown through to the cosy little dining room, table laid for two - intimate and comfortable - and served the most delicious dinner Edith, even in her misery, had ever eaten. Bouillon, and fish in a white sauce, duck with a rich cherry sauce, and Apple Charlotte for pudding. Everything was piping-hot and plentiful and Edith focused on the food to avoid thinking about what she would have to do next.

They retired to the library for coffee. The light was soft and the fire was warm and they were sitting on the same sofa, and Edith felt she could barely breathe - with the knowledge of what she had to do and the possibility of what she _could_ do, if only she were braver than she were.

"That… was a lovely evening, Sir Anthony," she managed at length.

"I'm glad you enjoyed yourself." He set aside his coffee cup, and added gently, "I… had the feeling that you don't go out much."

"No. I don't." Edith smiled wryly. "I'm… generally too busy looking after my aunt."

"Does she need you so very much? Lady Grantham isn't so old that she needs a constant companion, is she? I've not noticed that she's at all frail."

Edith shrugged. "I've told you. I earn my keep." Her voice was hard and not a little bitter.

Sir Anthony frowned. Suddenly, perceptively, he asked, "But… they aren't… _unkind_ to you, are they?"

Edith looked up at him. She did not think anyone had asked her anything like that before. "No. I… quite the opposite. They've been _very _kind." Before she could stop herself, the story that she had told herself night after night, every time she felt unhappy or neglected, spilled out of her: "They… had no obligation to take me in, after my mother died. They might have left me to an orphanage. But they didn't. So… I do what I can to repay them."

He raised an eyebrow. "And… will you be repaying them for the rest of your life?"

"Who else will look after them - my aunt and uncle - once Mary and Sybil have married, and left home?" she asked quietly, fixing her eyes on the fire.

Sir Anthony shook his head, troubled. "What of you, Edith? Who will look after _you_?"

She shrugged again. "I don't need looking after."

"All right," Anthony exhaled, as if he did not believe her. "But… I think you _do_ have something to say to me, don't you?"

"How did you know?" she asked, eyebrows lifting, startled.

"You've been looking at me oddly all evening," he explained kindly. "Looking as if you wanted to say something but didn't quite know where to begin. Am I wrong?"

"N-no. You're not wrong." She looked up at him a little sadly. "I'm sorry. I'm afraid that I rather… came here under false pretences."

He frowned. "Oh? In what way, my dear?"

Edith swallowed, wishing that they were not sitting quite so close on the sofa and that he had not just used that lovely endearment for the very first time. "I… I came to tell you that… that I mustn't see you again, after this evening."

For a moment, he stared at her like a fish out of water, his mouth gaping open in a way utterly unsuited to any gentleman, and then he stood and very slowly walked to the fireplace. His back to her, hand fisted on the mantle shelf, he paused and gathered himself. Edith waited, watching him in thoroughly wretched silence. At length he turned, pained confusion writ large across his dear face. "I… I'm sorry - have I insulted you in some way?" He took a step forward, but at Edith's reflexive flinch, he halted, and added, very carefully, "Please, Miss Crawley, if I have, allow me to - to apologise and to make amends."

"No." She shook her head numbly. "It's nothing you've done. It's me, it's all me. Just… forget me, Sir Anthony." Her voice faded to a whisper as she begged, "_Please_."

"I _couldn't_ forget you." He was aware that he was allowing too much of his heart to show, but for once he could not care less. Not when this lovely girl seemed so intent on breaking both their hearts, for no sensible reason that he could discern. "Not even if I wanted to."

"You must." Her voice broke and he saw her determined chin, for a moment, tremble. "P-please don't call or w-write again. I won't change my mind, and you'll only make everything more painful - for both of us - if you do."

A look of aching pain crossed his face, but he managed to force a nod. "A-as you wish."

There was a quick flicker of a grateful smile, but Miss Crawley could not meet his eyes. "I ought to - to telephone Downton, for the car. I think I've rather cast a pall over your evening."

"You don't need to do that." As he spoke, he rose and crossed the room to the door. Anything to occupy him, anything to keep him from reflecting too closely on the fact that this would be the last time that he would see her, speak to her, hear her laughter or share in her smiles. "Allow Stewart to drive you back. Let me do that at least."

For a moment, she looked as if she were about to refuse, and then something subtle changed in her face, and with a somewhat defeated voice, she agreed, "A-all right."

"I'll arrange it all." He had exited the room before she could say anything more, and Edith was left alone to try desperately not to allow her composure to slip. Not while she was still in his house, not while he was still close enough to be a danger - a sweet, _sweet_ danger - to her.

He was back only a few moments later, however, and helped her very politely into her coat. He escorted her punctiliously to the motor and waited as Stewart started it. "Goodbye, Miss Crawley."

Miserably, she shook hands before getting in. "Yes. Goodbye, Sir Anthony." Another look at his sad blue eyes, and she couldn't help bursting out, as Stewart began to pull away: "And please - forgive me, for everything."

* * *

Stewart was already waiting for Anthony in his dressing room when he went up later that evening. _Much_ later, for he had sat in his library far longer this evening than was his general custom, finishing his glass of brandy and brooding.

"Sorry to keep you up so late, Stewart," he sighed in apology, as his valet began to undo his tie for him. Then, in as off-hand a tone as he could manage: "Did Miss Crawley get home safely?"

"Yes, sir." Stewart hesitated, unhooked his master's cufflinks, and then added, "Sir… it may not be my place to say this…" He fell silent, as if waiting for permission, and Anthony nodded, beginning to unbutton his shirt.

"Go on, Stewart. We've known each other for long enough now that a little impertinence may be excused, I think."

"Thank you, sir," Stewart smiled gratefully. "It's just… the young lady cried all the way back to Downton Abbey, sir. I wasn't spying but… it was rather difficult to avoid noticing." His brows knotted together as Sir Anthony shrugged in his dressing-gown. "She… was not quiet, sir. Whatever may have passed between you… I don't believe that she is happy about it." Stewart shook his head, his troubled expression deepening. "There's something wrong there, sir, and - well, she's such a nice young lady, that it would be awful if she were to be made so unhappy over such a trifling matter."

His master nodded thoughtfully. "Indeed it would. Thank you, Stewart."

"Will that be all, sir?"

"Yes, thank you, Stewart. Goodnight."

* * *

He did not sleep that night, nor the next, nor the one after that, not properly. He could not. His thoughts were too occupied with Edith: where she might be, what she might be doing, what had caused her to end their friendship so suddenly, whether she was as unhappy as he was about it…

There must have been _something_, something he had done wrong. He could not believe her, when she had said that it was all her fault… and yet, Stewart had said she had wept all the way home as if she were mourning his loss as much as he was mourning hers. It was a puzzle he was at a loss to explain.

At length, he reached the only sensible conclusion. Despite what she had said, despite what she had asked of him, he _had_ to visit her. Just once more, just to make sure that _she _was sure, that there was not at the root of this some silly misunderstanding that he could smooth out.

It was a cold bright day when he drove over to Downton Abbey. He did not think he had ever been so nervous - certainly not when he had been courting his first wife. Maude had been sweet and steady and his best friend, but Edith… Edith did something strange and wonderful to his insides. All Anthony wanted to do was to scoop her up and hold her close and keep her safe from whatever it was that had made her so frightened.

To his astonishment, Edith herself opened the door before he had even shut the car door. "Sir Anthony."

"Miss Crawley - "

"Inside, quickly." Those lovely chocolate brown eyes were full of anxiety and she cast worried looks over her shoulder as she ushered him across the hallway and into her aunt's drawing room.

"I'm sorry," he burst out as soon as she had closed the door behind them. "I've tried to keep away, as you asked. Honestly I have."

"But you came back anyway?" He didn't think she sounded angry, though. Quite the opposite, if truth be told. Her face was pale and her cheeks were tear-stained, although her eyes were dry, and there was something like hope in her voice.

"Miss Crawley… Stewart told me that after the concert, you… were in some distress. I am only here to make sure - make _quite_ sure - that you are all right." His voice became low and earnest as he added, "I should hate to think that it was anything I had done, my dear."

"It wasn't. You needn't worry." She gave him a soft, tiny smile. "I… you always seem to be putting all the blame for everything on yourself. Really, here, you are guiltless."

"Then I don't understand why…!" Exasperated, his next words fell out before he could stop them: "Edith, surely you realise that I am in love with you?"

For a moment everything was still and silent. Edith closed her eyes as if she had heard awful news and her throat convulsed and tears seeped out from beneath her eyelashes and, eyes still closed, she whispered, "Then I pity you. I - I'm not good enough for you, Anthony, and I never could be, and that's why you should go."

She felt him step nearer, felt him, very gently, take her hands, and opened her eyes to see his face, blurred by her tears, looking down at her. "I don't understand, my darling," he whispered. "What makes you 'not good enough'?" Casting around for some reason, he reassured her, "I don't care about money, if that's what it is. I've plenty. I'm not on the catch for an heiress - "

"Oh, Anthony, if it were only that!" she laughed, more than a note of despair in her soft, beautiful voice.

"Edith," he said, serious and slow, "Edith, whatever it is, it cannot be so bad that you cannot tell me. I promise - I _promise_ \- if… if it is _delicate _in some way, then you have my word of honour that no one else shall learn what has passed between us here. I swear it."

Slowly, she pulled her hands from his and paced to the fireplace and back, rummaging in her pocket for a handkerchief. Taking a deep breath, she wiped her eyes and at length, she began. "You - you know that my mother died, when I was six, and that after that Lord and Lady Grantham took me in and cared for me."

Anthony nodded. "Yes."

Edith took a shuddering breath. "What - what you _don't_ know - what _nobody_ knows - is that my mother - my mother was Lord Grantham's younger sister, Rosamund."

Anthony frowned. "Then… why do they say you are a distant relative?"

"Because… my mother…" Edith's eyes welled again and she had to stop for a moment. Gently, Anthony placed a careful hand at her back and guided her to the sofa by the fire. His hands found hers again and when she looked up at him helplessly, he lifted them one after the other and kissed the fingertips - softly, barely more than a press of his lips, but it was enough. "When my mother was young," Edith began again, "she was very beautiful and very vivacious, and she fell very deeply in love with a captain in the Black Watch, James Gordon. He was… _penniless_ and my grandfather wouldn't countenance an engagement." She let out another of those soft, bitter chuckles. "A Scottish army officer was not considered _nearly_ good enough for the grand Lady Rosamund Crawley. He was going away to fight with his regiment in the Ashanti War, but… before he went… he and my mother…" She stopped, blushing, and he nodded kindly.

"Your mother became pregnant with you."

"Y-yes." She could not meet his eyes. "My father died of malaria and when my grandpapa found that my mother was with child, he cast her off. But my father left what little money he had to her, so… we lived comfortably enough."

"And then she died, too."

"Mmm. Scarlet fever." Edith swallowed and gave him a sad, watery smile. "My grandpapa was dead by then, but… losing his sister made the new Lord Grantham think much more kindly of her, and he and my Aunt Cora took me in and educated me… on the tacit understanding that _I_ would be the one to take care of _them_ in their old age." Her voice cracked and Anthony squeezed her hand. "Uncle Robert told me everything - about Mama, about Captain Gordon, when I was fourteen, or thereabouts, so that I would understand why…" She looked up at him, falling silent, her lovely brown eyes filled with sadness. "So you see now why I cannot possibly see you again, why any connection between us would damage your reputation irreparably."

"Is this all?" he asked calmly, when she had finally finished.

"Is it not enough?" Edith asked, astonished.

"Oh, sweet one, not nearly enough to make me stop loving you," Anthony whispered, his fingers leaving her hands to brush soothingly against her cheek.

Edith blinked. "One rather wonders what I _should_ have to do, to stop you!"

"Blow up Parliament at least, my love," he chuckled fondly, "and probably not even _that_ would be enough."

"Oh, _Anthony_…" She laughed and sobbed at once, her arms throwing themselves around his neck, a sudden, unbearable lightness coming over her.

"There, there, my sweet one." He held her close to him, smiling against her hair. "Enough of this silliness, now. Do say you'll marry me."

"They'll never forgive me!" Edith whispered. "You're meant for Mary!"

"But it is _you_ that I want, my dear," he reminded her. "And you that I will marry, if you'll take me."

"Of _course_ I will." Her lips caught his chin in a spontaneous, joyful kiss. "Oh, Anthony, I never thought I could be so _happy_…"

"And just _what_ is going on here?"

The two sprang apart, turning to the door at the sound of Lord Grantham's angry exclamation.

"Good afternoon, Robert. I have just had the pleasure of having my proposal of marriage accepted by Miss Edith."

"Is this true?" Robert asked his niece.

"Y-yes, Uncle Robert. I - I hope you will be happy for me."

"Nonsense. Strallan, you cannot possibly - " He turned to Edith, lowering his voice. "My dear girl, you must see that this is utterly impossible - your situation - "

"I am fully aware of Edith's 'situation', as you put it, Robert," Anthony intervened firmly. "And might I say that a good deal of anguish on both sides might have been avoided if Edith had had the confidence to tell me everything in the first place."

"Edith," Uncle Robert said, his voice shaking with anger, "I forbid you to - "

"Darling," Anthony intervened, "do you trust me?"

Edith did not hesitate. Her hand cupped his cheek, a slow, contented smile passing over her face. Her uncle's irritation seemed just a faint hum in the background - a wasp outside a window, nothing to be concerned with. "Absolutely."

"Edith!" Uncle Robert exploded, in the tones of a man fully aware that his control of the situation was slipping away.

"Then go upstairs," Anthony murmured, not paying the least bit attention to Lord Grantham, "and pack a bag and we shall leave immediately. Will you mind marrying quietly in Town, my dear?"

Edith shook her head, beaming.

"You'll be ruined!" Uncle Robert blustered.

"On the contrary, uncle," his niece replied, very quietly and very firmly, "I shall be very happy. Anthony?"

"Yes, my dearest darling?"

"There's nothing here that's worth my taking." Looking Lord Grantham directly in the face, she added softly, "Excuse us, Uncle Robert. Please, give my aunt my love, when she comes home. I shall write, I expect, when I'm settled." Taking one last look around the drawing room, Edith turned for the door with Anthony. "Goodbye, Uncle Robert."

* * *

The news that Edith Crawley had eloped with Sir Anthony Strallan was the talk of the county for months, and Yorkshire's gossips enjoyed themselves very much in debating various theories as to what had caused two such apparently mild-mannered creatures to take such a drastic step.

Edith and Anthony, touring the Continent, were ignorant of the sport their neighbours were having at their expense. Even when they returned, Lady Strallan in particular found that her husband had brought to her such a buoyancy of spirits that petty gossip and rumour did not trouble her. Her life was now one of warmth and laughter, and if the county were to sigh and shake their heads in wonder over her marriage, well, it was a very tiny price to pay for the happiness that she now enjoyed.


	3. Letters from Locksley

**AN: Set 1925-ish: Sir Anthony Strallan, who has become a recluse in his London home since returning wounded from the War, is looking for a tenant for Locksley, his country home. Lady Edith Crawley is looking for a home for herself and her ward, Marigold. 15,000 words that explores what the story might have been if Andith didn't meet until the 20s...**

* * *

"Oh," Henry Wilkins said to his wife over breakfast one sunny Tuesday morning, "I shan't be in to lunch today, darling. Someone has asked to be shown around Locksley Hall."

"Really?" Laura replied, eyebrows lifting a little. "That lovely old gingerbread house over the hill? How nice. It doesn't deserve to be left derelict."

"No," Henry agreed. "And, more's to the point, if I can manage to get it rented out, it'll look wonderful to Mr Enright."

Laura chuckled and smoothed her dress over her six-month bump. "You really are the most mercenary man in the world. Tell me about your prospective victim, why don't you?"

"She's a Lady Edith Crawley. You know, the Earl of Grantham's second daughter."

"Heavens! Doesn't she own a magazine?" Without waiting for a reply, Laura rushed on: "Yes, I remember now, she does: _The Sketch. _And she's looking for a house to rent?"

"Apparently so."

"She isn't married, though, is she?"

"No. But she's taken on her family's ward - a little girl. I suppose she wants a - a family home."

Laura exhaled dreamily. "Oh, and Locksley'll be such a lovely house for a little one to grow up in."

Henry stood, and kissed her firmly. "Thank you - I'll be sure to mention that. Excellent selling point. Have a lovely day." He crouched and pressed a second kiss to his wife's stomach. "And _you_ be exceptionally good for your mummy, little one. I shall know if you aren't."

A strong kick was his reply. The music of Laura's surprised laughter followed him into the hall and out to the Morris.

* * *

Lady Edith was in her early thirties, a self-possessed woman in a peach coat and soft straw hat, her hair neatly bobbed and curled. She turned slowly in a circle in Locksley's hall, staring up at the plastered ceiling and its skylight, her lips parted in delight. "Really, it's _lovely_, Mr Wilkins."

Without waiting for a reply, she twirled through the side passage, lined with books, and Wilkins heard her pleased gasp as she emerged into the library proper. Following her, he stepped inside just in time to hear her say, "Oh, this will be a _delightful_ room to work in…" She was standing at the French windows that led out into the grounds. "And Marigold - my ward - she will adore the gardens."

"There's an orchard, too, my lady. Apples."

"Lovely. And it's all very reasonably priced. My father tells me there's rather a tragic story behind all this, but he wouldn't elaborate."

"Ah. Yes. It is, rather. The owner is a widower - his wife died in childbirth, oh, ten years or so ago, and the child with her. He was something of a recluse, after that, and then he was injured in the war. He moved to London, and very rarely visits. Oh, the estate's well cared for, his tenants all speak very highly of him, but… he has rather lost his taste for living on the property."

"How sad. Well, I think I've seen all I need to see, Mr Wilkins. I'd love to take it."

* * *

"I'm not at all sure about this, darling," Cora Crawley sighed, shaking her head over the tea table.

Edith sighed and took a sip of her tea through pursed lips, her other hand stroking back a few golden curls from Marigold's temples. Marigold, sucking her thumb contentedly, tucked herself further into her mama's embrace. "Well, _I_ am. Mama, I'm nearly thirty-four years old. Far too grown-up to still be living with my parents. Especially not when I - " She stopped herself.

Cora sighed. "Especially not," she finished gently, "when you have a little one of your own."

"Yes." Edith's reply was short and blunt. "Quite." She kissed the top of Marigold's head. "It's all settled. We'll move in at the end of the month." At her mother's continued unhappy expression, Edith added, "I just… well, after Ber- after Lord Hexham… I need to get away. I need to stop… waiting for Prince Charming to turn up. I want a _life_, Mama. A life that's _mine_. I have the magazine - and now I'll have a house of my own, too."

"What will you do about Marigold?"

"I don't want to raise her in Town. I'll… hire a nursemaid, to start with, and then a governess, I suppose, in a year or so. Perhaps, when she's older… well, we'll see. There's the girls' grammar school, in Ripon, or… boarding school. We'll decide together."

"Then it seems you have everything settled." Cora squeezed her hand. "But I _will_ miss you. I'll miss you both."

Edith's eyes pricked with hot tears. "We'll miss you too. But we won't be far away. Only three miles. And we'll visit." She grinned impishly. "I'll still need Granny and Donk to step in on babysitting duty."

* * *

They moved in two weeks and six days later.

Edith had always been a formidable organiser, and moving one woman and a small child was much less trouble than moving a whole family might have been. Locksley's housekeeper, Mrs Dale, bored with maintaining an empty house, had jumped at the chance of a mistress to serve again, and had helped Edith to interview and hire a small staff - just a couple of housemaids, a nursemaid called Polly, and a manservant for the rough work. They wouldn't need much more, after all. Mrs Dale was glad to double as cook, and in any case Edith didn't intend to do too much entertaining: a quiet life with her books and her work and her daughter was all she wished for.

A few years' ago, even that would have seemed impossible. After Michael's disappearance, after the secrecy and shame of Marigold's birth, she had fought so hard, for so long, to have her little girl with her. Even if she couldn't acknowledge her as such, even if she had to hide their true relationship behind the cold, distant term of 'ward', this was such an improvement upon anything Edith had ever hoped for that she would not even _think_ of complaining.

So Edith was content as she tucked Marigold into bed that first night in the small, cosy room on the second floor that they'd designated the nursery. "Good night, my darling," she whispered, and kissed her forehead softly. "God bless."

"'Night, Mummy," Marigold murmured sleepily, clutching her stuffed bunny close to her chest.

Yes, she was _perfectly_ content as she sat downstairs in the library that evening, sipping a small glass of brandy and looking over some paperwork to do with the estate. Of course, her landlord was exceptionally good to his tenants, and seemed to have all the financial gubbins well in hand, but Edith had an idle idea that she might do her part socially, as it were. She didn't want to be lady of the manor, exactly, not in the same way that her mama and Granny had been but… well, it did seem to her that the emotional welfare of the estate had been somewhat neglected. Village fetes, tenants' teas, school prize-givings… yes, she could do something there.

When her housekeeper came in to clear the tray later, Edith broached the subject. "I think it's a fine idea, my lady," Mrs Dale nodded approvingly. "This house has been quiet for too long. Of course," she blushed a little, "none of us _blame_ the master for wanting to stay away. He was in love with his wife something dreadful, and it ate him up inside, staying here after she'd gone. And after the war…" She shook her head, and Edith felt, vaguely, that there was something else she would have said. But then the moment passed and Mrs Dale smiled. "In any case, the village could do with someone to care about it, again, my lady."

"Is there anyone I should talk to? For advice?"

"Mr Bentley, p'raps. He's the vicar."

"What a good idea! I must go down to London the day after tomorrow, but why don't I invite him for tea, when I'm back? Discuss things with him?"

"Very good, my lady."

* * *

The Reverend Bentley called that Friday and, having been bribed by several cups of tea and two thick, rich slices of fruit cake, heartily agreed with all Edith's plans. "I must say, my dear Lady Edith," he said, somewhat pompously as he prepared to take his leave, "it will be delightful to see some _life_ breathed into Locksley again."

Still, Edith thought, it would be only polite to let her landlord know what exact plans she had for his estate. Not that she thought he would mind - Mrs Dale always said what a kind and thoughtful man Sir Anthony was - but she didn't feel quite comfortable doing anything without… well, without his blessing.

She'd write him a letter.

* * *

Sir Anthony looked out of the study window of his London house on to grey skies. When his wife had been alive, Town had been exciting - a place to enjoy dining out and the theatre and parties. Now… how could he show his face out there? How could he show his face _anywhere_? Instead, he looked ahead through the years and saw nothing but emptiness and desolation.

A cough at the door interrupted his miserable reverie. "What is it, Stewart?"

"A letter, sir. From Locksley, I believe." Stewart's voice was hesitant as he uttered the last, and his eyes scanned his master's face for any sign of his distress.

Sir Anthony merely swallowed, and forced a tone of light interest as he repeated, "From Locksley? The new tenant, perhaps."

Stewart laid the letter down on the desk and politely bowed his head. "Yes, sir. Will that be all, sir?"

"Yes, thank you, Stewart."

Anthony reached for the paper knife with his good hand, held the letter down under the edge of the heavy glass paperweight, and slit it open one handed. He'd perfected this trick - and hundreds of others to help him manage - after he'd come back from France with only one working arm. _Among other things._

The writer's hand was neat and confident and feminine.

_Dear Sir Anthony, _(it read)

_My name is Edith Crawley and I am currently your tenant at Locksley. My ward and I have fallen thoroughly in love with your beautiful house, and I wished to write to tell you how happy we are here, and how grateful we are to you for letting us live in it._

_ Your other tenants speak very highly of you, sir, and I have been very impressed with how well Locksley is run, financially and materially. Given that I intend to stay here for the foreseeable future, however, I would very much like to revive some of the __social__ traditions of the estate, such as the annual Fete and the Tenants' Tea at Christmas-time. Your housekeeper, Mrs Dale (who is full of wonderful advice, as I am sure you recall!) and Reverend Bentley both believe that this would be a good idea, but I felt that I could not in all conscience go forward with any plans I might have without first writing to obtain your permission. _

_ I have no wish to 'tread on your toes' or set myself up as the lady of the manor. I am simply very bad at being idle, and would like to do something - however small - to repay the kindness that we have been shown since we began leasing Locksley. _

_ Yours in gratitude and friendship,_

_ Edith Crawley_

Anthony blinked quizzically and set the letter down on the desk. This Lady Edith sounded… rather a crusader. Clever, certainly - trying to butter him up so thoroughly before she got to the main thrust of her missive - and lively, too. Just the sort of energetic spirit that he was _not_. Really, there was something there that almost reminded him of Maude. And hadn't Wilkins mentioned something about her owning a magazine? Yes, she was one of those 'bright young things' the newspapers were always going on about.

Well, why not let her fiddle about with the estate a little, if she wanted? She was right, after all; the tenants did deserve more than the neglect he had been offering them, at least in the human sense of the word. Letting her do this would relieve his mind somewhat of the sense that he was failing in his duty towards them.

With the sense of doing something far more weighty than merely writing a letter, he reached for his pen.

_Dear Lady Edith,_

_ Thank you for your letter, which I received this afternoon. I am glad that you and your ward are finding such joy in Locksley._

_ I believe your plan to be a sound one. The village has lacked a 'social heart' of sorts for too long; all my fault, of course, but I am happy to support you as you rectify it._

_ Treat this as your complete carte blanche, to do whatever you wish to revive the old place._

_ Yours,_

_ A.P. Strallan_

He set down the pen and stretched his cramping wrist. Even after seven years of writing left-handed, it still got tired, even after short periods of usage. Well, there it was. All settled. The note had been carefully crafted, designed to fend off all future queries. One letter, he could stand. A flurry, he was not so sure. He spent so much of his time fighting away the aching longing in his chest for his ancestral home, the land to which he was tied by blood and duty, that he did not think he could bear to even read about it any more.

And Locksley would certainly not want to think about _him._

* * *

"Well!" Edith set down the letter with a faint huff. "What a curt letter!"

Tom leant over her shoulder and read it through. "Perhaps he's just shy?"

Edith tutted. "'Shy' my eye! Downright _horrid _and _selfish_, I call it. 'Do what you want with the place because I don't care!'"

"That _isn't_ what he's saying," Tom tried, fairly.

"It's close enough!" She shook her head. "It _surprises_ me. Mrs Dale always speaks so highly of his character. It just goes to show, I suppose, you never can truly know someone."

Tom shrugged. "At least you've got the answer you wanted."

"Yes," Edith mused. Slowly, a smile spread across her face. It was a smile that, on any other woman, Tom would have termed vindictive. "So he wants to wash his hands of the place, does he? Well, he won't get away with it _that_ easily, I'm afraid…"

"What are you going to do?" Tom wondered, a touch anxiously. Long acquaintance with the Crawley women had told him that 'I'm afraid' _usually_ meant that someone else should be.

"Oh, nothing awful." The smile became secretive and cat-like. "But I think it would be terribly _rude_ not to keep him informed, wouldn't it? After all, it _is_ his estate…"

* * *

_Dear Sir Anthony,_

_ Thank you so very much for your kind reply to my last letter. I'm so delighted to receive your continuing permission for all the exciting plans I have for the year ahead._

_ Last Sunday afternoon, the first Tenants' Tea was held, and enthusiastically attended. I thought it would be quite a shame to wait until Christmas-time. The Hall was packed from three o'clock until gone six. I hadn't quite anticipated how noisy it would be! _

_ Reverend Bentley made a speech; I'm sure you remember how he likes to talk!…_

And on and on, for two and a half pages of that flowing handwriting. At length, Anthony set the letter down, frowning.

He hadn't expected this.

There had been several such letters over the last few months, each one rather over-enthusiastic, each one going into all the trivialities and minutiae of village life in excruciating detail. When the first one had arrived, there had been something in it that was almost… _combative_, in the way for which all well-bred ladies had the capacity. Each compliment had bit, each light jest had stung - just as their writer had intended.

And now, after the third such letter, he felt _quite_ sure that he was being quite pointedly and politely scolded. Recalling the tone of his reply to that first letter, he winced a little. Perhaps he had been a touch short with her. Doubtless she thought him an uncaring sort of chap, only interested in leeching off those who worked his land for him.

The woman was clever, indeed. He supposed he ought to have expected no less of Violet Crawley's granddaughter. The old trout had always been terrifying, and he was now quite sure that she had passed some of that on to her descendant.

He would have to try to explain, somehow. But how to do that, without baring so much of the truth that he would embarrass her and wound himself?

How did one explain such a mess as the last ten years had been?

The study door opened at that moment, and Stewart announced, "Mrs Chetwood, sir."

Anthony sighed and stood to receive his sister's kiss. "Diana. Hello. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Mrs Chetwood, stripping off her gloves, shot him a wry look reminiscent of their late mama, and made herself comfortable on the sofa. "Don't sound _too_ delighted to see me, darling. I'll only think you care." Looking around her, she shivered. "Gosh, Anthony, do you think fires have gone out of fashion? It's positively _glacial_ in here."

"Forgive me." Almost automatically, he moved past her to the bell-pull. "I'll ring for Stewart and have one lit."

Diana waved a placating hand. "Don't bother. I'm only on a flying visit, just to see if you'll come to dinner tomorrow night."

Anthony hesitated. "Dinner? With whom?"

His sister's face was far too innocent. "Just with Archie and me and the boys… and Lord and Lady Kinlaird."

Her brother sighed and eased himself into his accustomed armchair. "I _don't_ think so, Di."

"It's only dinner," she wheedled. "They'd _love_ to see you, Elspeth was saying so only just the other day - "

"And we both know that if she ever _did_ lay eyes on me again, she'd be so revolted it would put her off her dinner for the next year."

Diana's eyes were full of pity. Irritated, Anthony flung himself up and marched back to the window. "Do you _revolt_ me?" his sister wondered. "Or Archie, or the boys?" She snorted. "Of course not!"

"I wonder if they'd feel the same if your David wasn't in line for my title and my money and my estate once I finally peg out," he retorted.

There was a long, cold silence - colder even than the air temperature in the room - and then Diana said, very stiffly, "I must have been a very poor sister if you believe that to be true, Anthony."

Her brother's shoulders slumped and he let out a long, frustrated sigh. "I don't. Sorry. I didn't sleep well, and it's making me beastly."

Diana rose from the sofa and approached. From behind, she took his good hand and squeezed it, bopping her head affectionately against his upper arm as she had done when they'd been children. "Idiot," she smiled. In that tone of voice, it sounded like an endearment. "You can't spend the rest of your life shut up in this house like a monster in a fairytale, you know. You came back alive, Anthony, when _so_ many other men didn't." Another soft squeeze of her fingers against his. "Don't waste the chance you've been given, hmm? Please?"

"Hmm." It was a non-committal noise in the back of his throat, and Diana recognised it. Anthony had inherited it from their papa, and it always meant that that particular conversation was over. She sighed and cast about for something else.

"Tell me about the new tenant at Locksley."

"Lady Edith?" he asked, a touch too quickly. "What about her?"

"Well, what's she like? I've read her column a few times - she sounds terribly interesting and modern."

Her brother grunted, whether in agreement or disapproval, she couldn't quite tell. "Mmm. She's… messing about on the estate. Reviving the old traditions. Tenants' teas and so forth. She's… written to me once or twice about them."

"_Has_ she?" Diana sounded rather intrigued. "How nice. I'd rather like to meet her, you know."

"Would you?" Anthony huffed, but he sounded amused, and she was glad for that.

"Yes, I would. Why - wouldn't you?"

He gave a lopsided shrug. "Not particularly. I doubt _she'd_ like to meet _me._" Heavily, he added, "And… she has her ward living with her. A little girl. Well…" His mouth twisted, in an expression so unlike the sweet boy he had been that Diana rolled her eyes.

"Is this you and your _wretched_ face again?"

"Yes." This was said with some finality. He kissed her forehead, offhandedly. "And now, if you'll excuse us, my wretched face and I have an urgent appointment with the estate accounts. Nicholls sent them up yesterday by the evening post."

"All right." At the door, she added, "I'll set you a place for dinner tomorrow." Anthony opened his mouth to protest and she rushed on, holding a hand up to fend off his complaints: "If you come, you come, and if you don't, you don't - just know that the offer's open." She blew him a kiss. "I'll see you when I see you, darling. Goodbye."

The door shut behind her with her a snap. Anthony sighed, dragged a hand across the roughened side of his face, and sank into the chair at his desk.

Lady Edith's letter glared up at him from the blotter like an accusation.

* * *

_Dear Lady Edith, _(he hesitated)

_Thank you for your detailed letter regarding the Tenants' Tea. I was delighted to receive it, and reading it gave me much pleasure._

_ I must, I think, beg your pardon, my lady. I fear that, at the beginning of our correspondence, I may have given you the impression that I did not care, either for my tenants or my estate, and that I was heartily glad to rid myself of both. Neither impression is true, I can assure you. _

_ I am most grateful for all that you are doing, both for Locksley and for the people who are unlucky enough to live there._

_ With sincere apologies for my conduct thus far,_

_ A.P. Strallan_

* * *

_Dear Sir Anthony,_

_ I hope this letter finds you well. Thank you for your note of the 23__rd__ of this month._

_ I think it is now __my__ turn to beg __your__ pardon. I must admit that my opinion of you was fixed most uncharitably by that first exchange of letters, and that all my correspondence with you since then has had the sole aim of irritating you. There! I have been utterly honest._

_ If you have not yet torn this letter up and deposited it in the fire or the wastepaper-basket, where it most probably belongs, then please do consider allowing me to make amends for my horrid behaviour thus far. I am in Town next Tuesday for a business meeting at the magazine I own and would very much like to offer you dinner as something of an apology. If my conversation does not earn your forgiveness, perhaps the food at the Ritz will?_

_ Yours in hope,_

_ Edith Crawley_

Mrs Dale raised her eyebrows when Edith mentioned her invitation. "Dinner, my lady?" she asked politely. "I see."

Edith winced. She was all too used to that tone in servants. Carson had it perfected, and it usually meant that the employer to whom it was addressed had committed some sort of awful _faux pas_. "I say, Mrs Dale, have I done utterly the wrong thing?"

Disarmed by this pleasing display of aristocratic ignorance, Mrs Dale's face softened. "No-ooo, my lady," she hedged, drawing the word out until Edith was convinced that it was a lie intended only to placate her. "Not _exactly_. It's just… well, the master's never been what you'd call a sociable sort. Not even when Lady Strallan was alive (God bless her soul) and after the War…" She left the end of the sentence hanging in the air between them.

"Yes," Edith mused. "He was… wounded, wasn't he, Mrs Dale? Mr Wilkins mentioned something about it, but he wasn't specific."

Mrs Dale patted her shoulder in motherly fashion. "Yes, well, best left alone, that sort of thing, my lady. Not a very nice story - and I know you wouldn't want to pry into a gentleman's private concerns, now, would you?"

Edith, recognising when she was being managed, gave it up.

* * *

"Dinner at the Ritz? Heavens, what a treat!" gushed Diana, looking at him over the top of the blue notepaper.

"Do you make a habit," asked her brother, making a grab for the letter, "of reading _everyone's_ personal correspondence, or is it only _mine_ that gets that honour?"

Diana held the letter out of his reach, fending him off with the other hand as she read it through again. "Just yours. _Especially_ when it sounds rather like you're being propositioned."

Anthony wrinkled his nose. "Don't be _absurd_. She's just being kind, that's all." At Diana's raised eyebrows, he pressed, somewhat irritably, "May I have my letter now, please?"

"What will you tell her?" Diana wondered, finally surrending the paper. Anthony folded it up briskly and stuffed it in his breast pocket.

"No, of course," he replied. At Diana's look of dismay, he hastened to add, "Don't worry, I'll be polite about it. If she got a look at me, she wouldn't want to dine with me anyway."

Diana shrugged. "If you say so, darling boy." Her voice was far too placid, and her posture, hands crossed neatly in her lap and eyes lowered, far too demure.

Anthony felt his own eyes narrowing. "And what's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Nothing!" Diana's expression was one of absolute, thoroughly suspicious, innocence. "Only… well, if she was willing to continue writing to you after you'd been such a thorough cross-patch… perhaps she might make a nice chum for you. That's all." She stood and kissed his cheek. "But I'm sure you know best, dear-heart."

"Yes," her brother replied grimly. "I do."

* * *

_Dear Lady Edith,_

_ Of course, I accept your entirely unnecessary apology without reservation. It has been very nice to hear something of Locksley in recent weeks, and I do hope that you feel able to continue writing with me, even without your former motive._

_ Regretfully, I am engaged elsewhere on Tuesday evening, but I thank you very much for your considerate invitation._

_ Regards,_

_ A.P. Strallan_

* * *

"Well," Edith sighed to Marigold over breakfast, "Mrs Dale was right." She set the letter down next to her plate and finished her cup of tea. "It seems Sir Anthony doesn't want to dine with me."

Marigold reached a sticky hand up and touched Edith's cheek. "Mummy sad?"

Edith shook herself and gave her daughter a bright smile. "No, silly bean! How could I ever be sad when I have you?" She gave the sticky fingers a quick kiss and reached for the fruit bowl. "Now, what about another apple, hmm, darling?"

"Apple," repeated Marigold obediently.

* * *

"I'm sorry, milady," Polly, the nursemaid, knocked at the library door late on Monday afternoon. The skies outside were black with rainclouds and every so often a hissing white tongue of lightning would lash across the sky, shortly followed by the resounding boom of thunder. The noise was only matched by the frightened howls of a thoroughly distraught Marigold, in Polly's arms.

Doubtless this was the cause for Polly's sudden and unusual appearance at this hour of the day. Edith always took between two and five o'clock in the afternoon to work, and generally she was not disturbed. Still, she rose from her desk now, setting aside her pencil and the article she was redrafting to receive her sobbing daughter. "What's all this, then, my darling?" she cooed, stroking a finger over Marigold's hot, damp cheek.

Polly bobbed apologetically. "Think she's a-frit by the storm, milady. I've been trying to settle her for the last hour. P'raps as you'll have more luck. She's always good for you, milady."

Edith nodded over her head. "Yes. Don't worry, Polly. Thank you. Why don't you go and straighten things in the nursery and I'll bring Miss Marigold up once the storm's finished?"

"Very good, milady."

Holding Marigold close in one arm, Edith wandered over to the window, pushing aside the curtain with her free hand. "Shhh, shhh, my love. Nothing to be frightened of, I promise. Just a silly old storm."

Her lips found Marigold's sticky forehead and kissed her gently. "Mummy's got you. Yes. Mummy's got you…"

* * *

_The world rocked around him as the shell exploded above their heads and Anthony staggered, his fingers scratching the roughened, damp planks of the trench supports as he tried to hold himself upright. A rat skittered over his foot, disturbed by the shelling, and all Anthony could hear was the dull hammering of his heartbeat in his deadened ears. Next to him, Lieutenant Kemble - who one month earlier had still been a student at King's, Cambridge - was white and tight-lipped with terror. _

_Anthony himself had only crawled into this part of the British lines yesterday morning, his mission concluded, and now this. A barrage of epic, endless proportions. 'Hell is empty and all the devils are here', he thought._

_Kemble was turning towards the enemy lines, one foot already on the fire-step. Anthony stretched out a hand, trying to grab him. "Stay down, Kemble, you bloody f- "_

_The bullet came from nowhere. The boy fell dead._

"Sir?" Stewart's hand on his arm jerked him awake.

"What is it, Stewart?" he asked blearily, sitting up and trying to calm the thundering race of his heart in his chest.

"Telephone call from Mr Nicholls, sir. There's been an awful storm up at Locksley."

"Is someone hurt?" A sudden thought struck. "Not Lad - not anyone up at the house?"

"No, sir, no one hurt." Stewart's face was perfectly blank and impassive, as if he had not even noticed Anthony's almost slip of the tongue. "But… there's quite a bit of damage and… sir, he says that he thinks he could arrange for repairs much more quickly and efficiently if he had you there to sign off on things in person." Stewart's face and voice were both apologetic. "If I might be so bold as to say, sir… I think he might be right."

Anthony pressed the thumb and forefinger of his good hand against his eyes and rubbed.

He had two choices, then.

On the one hand, he could refuse Nicholls' request, make some poor excuse and stay here, tucked away safely and privately. The repairs would be slowed down, but at least he would be spared the crashing horror and humiliation of being stared at and whispered about, of having children run away from him and women avert their eyes.

On the other hand, he could do the decent thing.

"Very well," he answered, wondering how his voice had ever become this weary and despondent. "Pack the valise, Stewart. What time is it?"

"Four o'clock in the morning, sir."

Anthony nodded. "We'll catch the first train up to Locksley." The train would be practically empty. He could hide away in a compartment to himself and with any luck, he would not meet anyone. There would be enough of that over the next few days in any case.

"Very good, sir. Fetch you some coffee, sir?"

"Yes. Thank you."

With a sigh, Anthony began to rise. The one blessing in this situation was that it was Tuesday. Lady Edith would not be there to see him, to know his awful secret. Their trains might even cross - he on his way to Locksley, she on her way to London. With any luck, he might be able to get back to London before she returned North.

* * *

"Will we have enough hot broth and tea for everyone?" Edith asked Mrs Dale anxiously, bread knife still in her hand from cutting the last loaf.

Mrs Dale squeezed her elbow reassuringly. "Yes. Don't you fret, milady. We've enough here to feed a small army."

Edith brushed her hair back from her face with a tired smile. She felt as if she had been going non-stop since the early hours, when the first exhausted, soaked tenant and his family had knocked at the door. Half their windows had been smashed, a chimney had collapsed and some of the roof had gone west too. They weren't alone, either.

Of course, she had immediately cancelled all plans to go to London. She was obviously needed at home.

Mrs Dale had put a large cauldron of beef stew on and the maids had found piles of bed linen, and Edith herself had telephoned to Downton for the campbeds they'd had used during the War, when they'd housed hundreds of convalescing soldiers. Tom had driven them over in the estate truck an hour later, and even stayed behind to help Edith set them up.

And now the house was filled to the rafters with hungry people waiting to be fed. Edith felt almost _happy_ as she carried the big bread-basket through to the Hall, where they'd set up trestle tables to feed everyone. At least she had a purpose.

Five o'clock came and went before Edith and Mrs Dale and the others had fed everyone. "I'll just run up to the nursery and check on Miss Marigold," she murmured, as the rush began to dwindle.

"Right you are, my lady," Mrs Dale nodded. "Poor little mite - bet she wonders what all this fuss is about!"

But Marigold was playing contentedly with Polly, and didn't even look up from her dolls' house. Edith didn't go in, just stood and watched her daughter for while. Then, heaving a satisfied smile, she closed the door softly to and made her way back downstairs.

As she reached the landing and looked down the stairs, she saw two figures. One was Mr Nicholls - she'd know that grizzled grey head and serviceable shooting jacket almost anywhere. The other, she presumed, was her landlord. He was tall and upright - a reliable sort of figure.

And then he turned around.

It was a terribly handsome face, by and large. Two clever, bright blue eyes, a shock of _very_ blonde hair - and a livid scar that ran from the bridge of his long, slightly crooked nose in a vicious diagonal down into his right cheek, just missing the eye. His right arm was held firmly against his chest by means of a sling - _not_ the sort that you got from the hospital, a scruffy white bandage, but something rather dashing in black silk. A permanent accessory. _Oh_, Edith thought faintly. _So _this_ is why he didn't want to go to Ritz._

She walked, firm and frank, down the stairs and held out her left hand to shake his uninjured one. "Hello. I'm Edith Crawley. You must be Sir Anthony."

He did not reply immediately, simply stared at her as if he had not quite understood what she had said. Edith could feel herself beginning to smile at the absurdity of it all, just a quirk of her lips, and then he seemed to realise that he was being spoken to. "Yes. Yes, I am." It was a nice voice, Edith thought, deep and cultured, albeit a little hesitant and rusty, as if he did not use it often. "I'm… sorry to call so late," he continued. "I… assumed you would be in London. Nicholls didn't tell me you were here until about half an hour ago."

"Oh, not at all!" Edith exclaimed. "I couldn't possibly dash off to Town when I was needed here." Peering up at him, she added, "Heavens, you must be frozen through. Please _do_ come and eat something." Seeing his hesitation, and the way he looked apprehensively beyond her into the noisy dining room, Edith added, "I can have a tray sent through to the library, if you'd like? You'll find it easier to get a seat by the fire in there, at least."

"Thank you."

"I'll bring it through myself."

At Sir Anthony's shoulder, Mr Nicholls coughed politely and Edith realised that she hadn't even greeted him. "I'm sorry, Mr Nicholls. Will you stay too? There's more than enough food to go around."

"No, thank you, my lady. My wife will be expecting me at home."

"Of course. Please do let me know, if there's anything else I can do to help, won't you?"

Nicholls shook hands politely. "Of course, my lady. I'll see you in the morning, sir?"

"Oh… yes, Nicholls, thank you. I'll most probably be at the Lamb and Flag, but I'll telephone if there's any change."

"Well," Edith intervened, "I'll go and see about that food. Do excuse me, gentlemen."

* * *

Nicholls had been _piteously_ grateful to see him, so grateful that he had not even flinched at Anthony's scarred face or useless arm or the haggard, drawn expression in his eyes. He only shook his hand, more heartily than ever he had before, while Anthony felt himself shrivel up inside from shame, and gestured to the mess of the farmhouse roof in front of them. "God knows how much all this'll cost to put right, sir," he shook his head.

"It's no matter," Anthony reassured him briskly. "Our coffers are deep, thank God - we can lay out as much as is required. I'll write to them myself, of course, but… perhaps you could relay the message in person, Nicholls, that the estate will deal with all costs, that no one will lose their home or their land over this."

"Of course, sir. But," Nicholls hesitated, and then pressed on bravely, "that sort of thing… might come better from you, sir. More personal."

Anthony shifted awkwardly on his feet, glad that he was turned away, under the pretence of examining the damage further. "Oh, I don't know. I… tend to make people a little uneasy these days, Nicholls."

Nicholls coughed. "I think you'd be surprised, sir. Folk as have known you since you were a mite in short trousers, beggin' your pardon, sir - "

"Yes, well," Anthony interrupted hastily. "We'll see. On to Bainbridge's cottage next, I think?"

"Yes, sir," Nicholls replied. Anthony tried to pretend that he couldn't feel his accusing stare burning into his back.

And so the day went on. "Everyone'll be out on the land, I suppose, checking crop damage," Anthony observed as the afternoon drew on. They had seen very few of the tenants themselves, and those they had seen had only been at a distance.

"Oh, no, sir," Nicholls replied cheerfully. "That Lady Edith, up at the big house, she's offered everyone places to sleep and food and the like. I suppose most of the folk are up there."

Anthony stopped dead and turned surprised eyes on his estate manager. "But… I thought she was planning to be in London today?"

Nicholls shrugged. "I don't know about that, sir. She hasn't gone, anyway. I saw her this morning myself, a few hours before you arrived yourself, sir."

* * *

"However did you know who I was?" Anthony wondered. "I don't think I look terribly like the lord of the manor just now."

Dinner had been… less awkward than he had been expecting. Lady Edith had been perfectly sweet and polite - concerned about the hard day he must have had, concerned about the tenants currently bedding down in her - _his_ \- Hall - and he had found it remarkably easy to talk to her, over the trays of broth and bread and hot tea she'd brought in for them.

"Perhaps not," she smiled softly over the rim of her teacup, "but that painting of your parents, up in the gallery… it's my _very_ favourite." Her shoulders quirked as if in explanation as she added, "You're your papa's image."

He gave a rueful chuckle. "I was once. Not any more."

"On the contrary." Her voice was _very_ firm. "I would have known you anywhere. Your eyes…" She blushed. "They're unmistakeable." She chewed her lip. "But I… I suppose this is why you didn't want to go out to dine, when I asked?"

"Partly, yes." He shot her a wry glance. "Added to which… if you'd been in full possession of the facts, I doubt you'd have wanted me to, either."

"Not at all!" Edith sighed. "You were injured during the War, I suppose."

"Yes." He swallowed and Lieutenant Kemble's childish, dead face swam briefly in front of his eyes. "I was."

She shook her head regretfully. "Well… there's an awful lot of it about. My parents offered up their house as a convalescent home during the War, so I saw rather a lot of it. Unfortunately."

He needed to change the subject.

He needed to change the subject _right now_ before he vomited soup all over the hearth-rug and disgraced himself.

"Well… it's nice to know the artwork's appreciated." Forcing himself to take slow, steadying breaths, he looked about him at the library: the Royal typewriter on the desk, a few mystery novels on the occasional table - Christie and Sayers - a child's brightly painted wooden building blocks abandoned on the hearth-rug… Yes, this room, that he had adored and missed so much, was well-loved again. "As is the rest of the house, apparently."

Lady Edith stood, her hands fluttering anxiously as she began to tidy. "I'm sorry. You must excuse the mess. I… wasn't exactly expecting visitors, and it's been rather busy all day - "

"It's your home," he interrupted softly. "I think you're rather allowed to keep it in any state you like. I say, please don't think I'm here to - to _inspect_ you, or anything. Really." At Lady Edith's half-doubtful look, he insisted, "I'm… _glad_ that someone is living in the place, _properly_ living in it, not… preserving it like a museum."

"Oh." Apparently, he had convinced her, for she sat down again with a _plump_ on the sofa. "Well, that's all right, then."

A soft knock at the door interrupted them, and Lady Edith looked up. "Oh, that will be the nursemaid bringing my - my ward to say goodnight."

Anthony's face froze. "Perhaps I should…"

Her hand was soft and gentle against his sling. He would have flinched at the sudden, unaccustomed, unlooked-for intimacy, if he had not been so damned terrified. "Not at all." The look in her eyes was of a woman desperately trying to conceal her sympathy. "Marigold's a very bold little girl. She's frightened of thunderstorms and the jack in the box and squirrels - we don't quite know why yet - but _never_ of people. I promise." Her voice softened and lowered as she added, "But I can go up to the nursery with her, and let you finish your dinner in peace, if you'd prefer?"

Sucking in a breath, Anthony shook his head. "No. I've… disturbed your evening enough."

Another of those soft squeezes of her fingers against his arm. Raising her voice a little, she called, "Come in, Polly!"

As her ward was borne towards her, Lady Edith's whole demeanour seemed to change. Her face softened and grew much younger and more open, somehow. The infant was a pretty little thing, Anthony noted idly, with the same blonde curls as her guardian and brown eyes which were alert and interested, like a tiny bird's.

Lady Edith received her into her arms with the ease of the natural, or the long-practised, and smiled at the young nursemaid. "Thank you, Polly. I'll tuck her in myself, after her story."

"Very good, my lady." The door shut behind her with a quiet snap, and then Lady Edith was smiling at the little one and kissing her hair, and saying, in soft, bright tones, "Hello, my darling. Will you come and meet Sir Anthony? He's the lovely man who lets us live at Locksley."

* * *

"Mummy," Miss Marigold babbled sleepily, "Mummy rabbit." The little one had been with them for twenty minutes or so, and had met her guardian's landlord, and had a story read to her, and was now in the process of falling asleep in Lady Edith's arms. Anthony had been surprised at that, at first - 'Mummy.' But, he supposed ruefully, children would always need mothers, and if Lady Edith were the one who had taken the most interest in her… Babies were like ducklings in that way, eager to imprint on anyone who showed sufficient interest in them.

"Well, where did you leave him, my darling?" Lady Edith murmured patiently into her hair.

"Rabbit kitchen," Miss Marigold mumbled around the thumb she had slotted firmly into the corner of her mouth.

"Oh, dear," Lady Edith smiled, casting a mischievous look in Anthony's direction. "Then we must just hope that Mrs Dale hasn't put him into a stew!"

Miss Marigold was silent for a moment and then snuffled out a little, tired giggle. Lady Edith stood, hefting her in one arm, and looked at Anthony. "I'm sorry. Would you mind? I'll only be a moment, and I've learnt that when she's half-away, it's _so_ much better not to move her about too much."

He blinked, confused, and Lady Edith blushed. "Sorry," she said again, and he wondered briefly who had taught her that she had to apologise so often and so automatically. "I mean… could you hold her for me, just for a moment?"

"Oh, I… Yes, of course." Really, was she a witch of some sort, that she could make him say so many things he had not intended to say?

"Thank you. You're terribly kind." She beamed at him and Anthony suddenly felt convinced that there were many things he would do to earn another one of those smiles from her. And then she settled Miss Marigold into the crook of his good arm and hurried purposefully from the room.

* * *

_Dear Sir Anthony,_

_ I hope you arrived back in London safely and that your journey was not too trying. As Mr Nicholls will no doubt have told you, repairs are progressing well and everyone will soon be back at home._

_ It was so very nice to meet you, in person. If you were thinking of coming up to Locksley for the Armistice Day service next month, do consider staying with us at the house. My cousin Rose and her husband Atticus, the son of Lord Sinderby, are staying with me at present, so there would be no impropriety. I'm sure the Lamb and Flag is very comfortable, and Mr Nicholls tells me that they serve a very good ale, but I do think it very unfair that you should feel unable to sleep in your own house!_

_ Yours in friendship,_

_ Edith Crawley_

Anthony frowned down at the letter. He _hadn't_ been thinking of it, as it happened. Armistice Day was never a pleasant time of year, after all, not for any person who had been grown during the War. He had planned, as he usually did, to wear a large coat, collar turned up and hat pulled down to hide his scarred complexion, and to stand at the back of the crowds lining Whitehall for the silence around the Cenotaph, and then to sneak back home quietly afterwards for a brandy and a quiet afternoon in his library.

But now there had been this letter, this _invitation_ really, wasn't it? Surely she'd think him terribly rude if he refused her invitation to stay - and terribly disrespectful if he confessed that he wasn't intending to return to Yorkshire for the bally show at all.

Damn. _Damn_.

"Stewart?" he asked absently.

"Yes, sir?"

"Look here… would you mind terribly if we went up to Yorkshire next month? For the Armistice Day commemorations?"

"Not at all, sir." Stewart hesitated. "If I may say, sir, it's never… sat well with me, for you not to be there, on the estate, for the day."

Anthony smiled thinly. "No. You're right. Damn poor show, really." He lifted the letter. "Lady Edith's offered us board. She's got cousins with her just now, so… well, that wouldn't be improper, would it?"

"Perfectly proper, sir. I shall make all the arrangements."

"Good. Good." Slowly he rested the letter down on the desk again. "Carry on, Stewart."

"Of course, sir."

* * *

"What about a dinner, just before Atticus and Rose go away again?" Mary wondered. "That would be nice, wouldn't it? What about the tenth? I suppose your staff _are_ capable of a little, family party, aren't they, Edith?"

Her sister sighed. "Well, why do I have to host it? Atticus and Rose have been dining at Locksley for weeks - wouldn't it be more appropriate to have their going-away dinner at Downton?"

Mary scowled. "Don't be so disobliging! _You_ were the one who wanted to set up house away from us, be your own mistress. Well, this is what women in charge of their own establishments _do_."

Edith gave up. It would, she knew, be pointless to argue further. "All right. But… not the tenth, hmm? It's just… I have my landlord staying that evening, for the Armistice commemorations, and it might be awkward for him."

"Why 'awkward'?" Mary's eyebrows were lifted in patent irritation. "He _does_ eat dinner, I suppose? Invite him too, if you have to."

"But I - "

"Oh, really, Edith! Why must you make everything so _difficult_? They're leaving on the twelfth, and it would be so inappropriate to have a jolly party on Armistice Day - and if we hold it any earlier, it will just look odd. It _has_ to be the tenth."

"All right." Edith worried at her lip. He would hate a public dinner, she knew it. And she couldn't just spring one on him…

* * *

"Hello, Strallan House, this is Stewart, Sir Anthony's man speaking. How may I help you?"

"Hello, Stewart, this is Lady Edith, calling from Locksley. Is Sir Anthony available?"

"I'm afraid he's dealing with some urgent correspondence just now, my lady, and has given orders not to be disturbed. May I take a message?"

"Yes. Thank you. I thought I'd better telephone… you see, I've been asked to hold a going-away dinner for my cousin and her husband, on the tenth of November. Sir Anthony is invited, of course, but… well, I know that he isn't… terribly sociable and…" She trailed off. Stewart liked her just for that, for that hesitation, for that concern she seemed to show for his master.

"I shall ensure Sir Anthony's tails are packed, my lady," he replied smoothly. "And that Sir Anthony is fully apprised of the situation." _Do him good to get back into society again, and see that he wasn't nearly so shocking as he thought himself._

* * *

"I'm terribly sorry," Lady Edith apologised, as she led Anthony up the stairs to the chamber where he would be sleeping, "about this _horrid_ dinner. It wasn't my idea. But when my sister Mary gets the bit between her teeth about something, she's _utterly_ bloody-minded."

She did sound awfully anxious about the whole thing, and Anthony's natural chivalry, a little rusty from disuse, creaked its way to the surface. "Not at all. It can't be helped. It will be… rather nice to see your parents again, and your grandmama, of course."

Lady Edith gave a nervous little laugh. "Really? They're not exactly… the easiest company." They had reached his door - the room he had slept in as a boy. "I really am _very_ sorry."

Anthony soon found out why she had felt it necessary to apologise. Of course, when he had said all that nonsense about her relations, he had been, to a certain extent, being polite - but he had not expected them to be quite as awful as they were. He remembered old Lady Grantham from his childhood, of course. She had been stern then - and his own sweet, clever, forward-thinking Mama had positively despised her - but old age seemed to have given her a sharp, cruel lack of concern for others' feelings, that her eldest granddaughter had apparently inherited. But her daughter-in-law was sweet enough, and her son… well, Robert had never been the brightest or most tactful of men.

"It must be quite odd for you to come here and find all Edith's useless knick-knacks lying about the place, Anthony!" he joked cheerfully, after the ladies had gone through.

"Not at all," Anthony managed quietly. "Better for the old place to be lived in, you know."

"Hear, hear," echoed Tom Branson, Lady Edith's brother-in-law. A nice fellow, Anthony thought. "Edith's always full of praise for Locksley and how well it's run."

Anthony gave him a warm smile. "That's very kind of her. And… well, she's doing a terribly good job of taking care of the house."

"Even with little Marigold running about the place?" wondered Lord Grantham. "She's a sweet little thing, but small children and pleasant houses rarely mix." He shook his head. "Did Edith tell you about her ward, before you'd agreed to let to her?"

"Shall we go through and join the ladies?" Mr Branson interrupted brightly. Lowering his voice, he added to Anthony as they went through, "Lord Grantham's never been terribly keen on the idea of Edith moving out with little Marigold. But… Edith had her heart set on it, and there wasn't much he could do about it. He'd like them both back at Downton, really."

"Back under the paternal rod. I see. So now he's looking for ammunition," Anthony translated as they crossed the hall.

Tom nodded, looking relieved that he had been understood. "Yes. So… if she is making a bit of a nuisance of herself… just… talk quietly to Edith about it. Don't… don't go to her father about it?"

"Oh, I think that sort of thing comes under the heading of a private conversation between a landlord and his renter, doesn't it?" Anthony reassured him. "I wouldn't want to cause any sort of trouble for her. And I happen to think that Miss Marigold's rather sweet. When did your family adopt her?"

"About a year ago. She was, what, nearly two, then."

"What are you two gossiping about?" Edith asked brightly at Tom's shoulder.

"Just Marigold," Mr Branson replied, and kissed her cheek. "Your father was digging again, over the port."

Lady Edith's face went suddenly very white and her eyes flew to Anthony's. He lifted a reassuring hand, wondering just what it was about this little girl that made Lady Edith so frightened about the prospect of losing her. There were _real_ mothers up and down the country who didn't care as much for their little ones as she seemed to about this orphan girl she had adopted. "Don't fret. Mr Branson… headed him off at the pass, as it were."

"You know," she said, very earnestly, "if there's ever anything you'd prefer me to do… to stop her from spoiling things here, I - "

"What has she spoiled?" Anthony asked sensibly. "If you want some hints, though, there are some perfectly frightful vases up in the music room - she'd be helping me enormously if she smashed them quite to bits!"

Lady Edith chuckled, and as she did Anthony noticed an extraordinary thing. How ever had he not spotted it before? In all their previous conversations, even when she had appeared on the surface to be perfectly content, there had been a haunted, almost hunted look at the back of her eyes.

He had only noticed it now because, as she laughed at his joke, it had _utterly_ vanished.

* * *

"Is the D.S.O _really_ necessary?" Sir Anthony asked, his voice fraught with tension as Stewart pinned it to his coat.

Stewart stepped back, reaching for the clothes-brush. "I think so, sir. All the other men who served will be wearing their decorations. There's no conceit in it, sir." His fingers hovered over the medal. "But if you would prefer not to - "

Anthony sighed. "No, no. It's on now, I suppose."

"Very good, sir."

Lady Edith's eyes went round like saucers when she saw the decoration on his chest, he notes. "Gosh. A D.S.O. I had no idea."

"No reason why you should." He forced a smile. "It's not so impressive as it seems, I assure you."

She tutted as they walked out to the car. "I might not know much about the Army, but I'm intelligent enough to know that they don't exactly hand those out like sweets. What were you?"

"A Major."

"And was it _utterly_ frightful?"

"Yes." His voice was tight. "It was, rather."

"Where were you?" She bit her lip. "I'm sorry - do you mind my asking?"

"No." It was half a lie. "I was… all over the place, really. A sort of… roving brief."

"I see." He could sense her watching him out of the corner of her eye as she drove along.

"What is it?"

"Oh, just… you don't sound as if you ever talk about it," she explained. "And… in my experience, when you've been through something so awful… talking about it can… help to bleed the poison out, just a little."

Anthony shrugged. "Yes. I suppose it might." There was a heavy, lingering silence for a moment, and then Lady Edith said, quietly, "Ah, here we are now."

They stepped out of the car together. Anthony stood, staring over at the church, willing his feet to move, to carry him where he needed to go. But they would not.

_Damn. Not now._ He _couldn't_ freeze up now, not in front of Lady Edith. He knew he was a coward - _she_ didn't need to know it too!

And then a small, slim hand slipped into his elbow and squeezed. Glancing down in surprise, he saw her already at his side, her eyes filled with sympathy. "Come on," she said gently. "We'll go in together."

* * *

"Sir Anthony?"

Anthony stood, looking up from the last finger of brandy in his glass, and gave her a tired smile. "Hello. Have the others gone to bed?"

"Yes," Lady Edith nodded. She was just in her stockinged feet, he noted, and she was scuffing one toe along the top of her opposite foot nervously as she spoke. "They were sorry you didn't feel like dining with us this evening. Can I fetch you anything?"

"No, thank you."

Edith nodded again and then, shooting a look which almost seemed to dare him to protest, she strode quickly across the room and curled herself up on the sofa next to where he had been sitting. With a softly raised eyebrow, Anthony lowered himself slowly back down. "And… thank you, for earlier. At the church, when you… you know."

"I'm sorry," she blushed. "You looked as if you needed… someone to hold on to."

"Yes," Anthony replied, surprising himself. "I… rather did. Armistice Day, you know… it always… brings back things one would rather forget."

"Would it help to tell _me_ about it?" At his hesitation, she reassured him, "I know I'm a journalist, but… I can keep my own counsel, when it's important."

Anthony gave her a tired smile. "Yes. Of course."

All was silence for a moment, save the wind outside, and the hissing and crackling of the fire, and then Edith heard his voice, hesitant and slow, as if he were feeling his way through each individual word, sifting his memory for the best to phrase each individual thought.

"At the start of the War," he told her, "I got a desk job at Whitehall, dealing with intelligence gathering, but… when the top brass found out how fluent I was in German, they realised that I could be far more useful if I was placed at the Front. That was in 'sixteen. Well, for the first year, it was alright. A few skirmishes, but nothing too hellish." He gave a bleak smile. "Nothing more hellish than anyone else was witnessing, at least. And then… and then there was Passchendaele." He stopped and his breathing seemed heavier and more laboured. "'_I died in hell - (they called it Passchendaele)',_" he quoted. His voice had taken on a mocking note, bitter and unpleasant.

Gently, Edith touched his arm. "You don't have to…"

He swallowed and when he looked at her, his eyes were suddenly full of tears. "But I do, I think. Do you know, I've never spoken of it, not to anyone? Perhaps… perhaps you were right. Perhaps it _is_ time." He paused again, gathering courage, and then addressed his knees.

"But, really, it's impossible to describe it, nothing I can say can truly make you understand. And if I could find the words, they certainly wouldn't be ones I could use in front of a lady." She sighed in almost-fond impatience at his chivalry, and he continued. "There were twelve of us. I was the highest ranking officer, a Major by this point. It was just a normal day We were advancing along, doing what we could, which wasn't much, and… then it happened. I don't know exactly how I knew, but I felt the bullet coming towards us. Stewart was with me, you know. My sergeant, at that time. He'd saved my bacon a few times but this time, I pushed him out of the way, and got hit myself. He got me into a ditch, out of the way, so to speak, and carried on. I was bleeding fairly heavily by this point, and I was drifting in and out rather. But I remember the shelling, and the mud, and the blood and the cold, and thinking that I wished it would all be over. I had my service revolver in my hand, at one point, ready to…" He stopped and coughed slightly, glossing over what Edith had already guessed. "Well, they found me in the end, and brought me home."

Her hand was soft against his wounded arm, and then it went further, and he felt the backs of her knuckles grazing against his scarred cheek. "But you got this… and this… for your trouble."

"Yes." He closed his eyes against those tender fingers. "I was at a field hospital, first, and then my sister Diana had me to stay with her. But…"

"But you didn't want to come back to Locksley," Lady Edith finished for him.

"No." Opening his eyes, he confessed, "I… was _ashamed_. Ashamed that I came back when so many younger men didn't."

"That isn't your fault," Lady Edith murmured. "You went to fight when you didn't have to, and you were wounded saving another man's life. It was luck, that's all. If you had been able to, I have no doubt that you would have died to spare others. But… since you did come home… you shouldn't waste the life you _have_ been given." Her eyes were serious but kind. "That _would_ be something to feel ashamed of, I think."

* * *

"Good Lord!" exclaimed Diana, entering the study and nearly tripping over a stack of magazines precariously piled on the floor, "it looks like someone's let the British Library Reading Room loose in here!"

Anthony looked up from the magazine he was currently perusing with more than usual interest. "Just… a bit of light reading, that's all."

Diana's eyes widened. "Of _The Sketch_?" And then, dawning realisation crossed her face. "Oh, I _see_. This wouldn't have anything to do with Lady Edith, would it?"

"Absolutely not."

Diana _hmm_-ed in a 'know-it-all' sort of way and perched on the sofa. "How was Locksley?"

Anthony hesitated before he answered. At last, he managed, "Very nice."

"How polite! Tell me honestly, though - a flapper with a small child? She must be wrecking the place."

"Of _course_ she isn't! Miss Marigold is a very well behaved child, and as for Lady Edith being a _flapper_, that's patently ridiculous! Really, Diana, I - "

And then he stopped. Diana had not been able to hold her chuckles back for long enough for him to finish. "So you like her then?" she managed, when she had finally stopped laughing enough to speak clearly.

"Yes." Anthony's voice was rather stiff as he replied. "She's… she's very nice."

Diana squeezed his injured hand. "Good. I'm glad. Do forgive me for teasing, won't you? But honestly, you never say what you're really thinking unless someone's being mean to someone you like, so…" Idly, she picked up one of the magazines and flicked through it. "Are you going to read _all_ of her columns, Anthony?"

"Nothing else to do, particularly. And it would be good to be well-informed, I think."

"Very responsible of you," Diana agreed, a glimmer of fun still in her eyes. "But don't bother with these ones," she gestured to a pile at her feet.

"Why's that?"

"Oh, her column didn't appear for about eight months. About June '22 to February '23. She was unwell, went to the Continent for her health."

"Did she?" _Did she indeed?_

It might be coincidental, Anthony tried to tell himself later. People got unwell and went away for their health all the time. People adopted orphans all the time too.

But at the same time, unmarried women with delicate problems to solve quite often did the same thing. They just didn't tend to bring said problem back with them afterwards.

He groaned and dragged a hand down over his face. Really, though, having seen Miss Marigold - all messy blonde curls, and impish eyes, and sweet joyful giggles - could he really blame Lady Edith for wanting to keep her? Of course not.

_Poor girl. Awful mess. Thorough explanation._

Well, he decided with determination, he wouldn't let it stop him from befriending her. He was intelligent enough to understand that the last few years must have been positively hellish for her. How hard she must have fought to have the life she did, with her daughter! Really, she must be awfully brave. He could admire that, as all cowards admired those with courage.

Yes, he could admire her. He'd stay silent and be her friend and let her care for Locksley in peace and never - _never_ \- let her know that he knew her secret.

* * *

"Telephone call for you, sir," announced Stewart. "Lady Edith."

"Hello?" he asked cautiously.

"Hello!" Lady Edith sounded bright and cheerful and almost - _almost_ \- glad to hear his voice. "How are you?"

"Oh, you know, trundling along. Is everything all right?"

"Yes, perfectly. Only… well, I'm in London on Friday for some _tedious_ business meetings at the magazine, and… my parents are looking after Marigold for me and I've been ordered not to rush to get home afterwards, so… I was wondering if you'd like to have dinner with me. At my flat, perhaps, if you'd prefer not to go out? I really would enjoy it."

"I… don't think so." Anthony took a breath and found himself saying, "Look… you've fed me at Locksley. _Twice_, now. I really ought to return the favour. Perhaps you'd care to dine at Strallan House?"

"Really? That - that would be _lovely_."

"Excellent. Shall we say… seven o'clock? Will that give you enough time after your meetings?"

"Yes, plenty. I… I shall see you on Friday, then."

"I look forward to it."

He put the phone down smiling.

* * *

"Mrs Cox?" The cook looked up from her table, where she was reading the paper.

"Yes, sir?"

"I… I've invited Lady Edith Crawley to dine here on Friday evening. _This_ Friday evening. She'll be arriving at seven. We can put on a nice spread, can't we?"

Mrs Cox did not quite manage to hide her delighted surprise. "Oh! Oh, of course, sir! I'd be glad to."

"Jolly good." He ducked his head. "Thank you."

* * *

The dress was silk a shade darker than sea green, and glimmering with beads. Edith had had it made the last time she had been in Town, a few months' earlier, just as something fun to do, and it suited her well.

But standing there in front of the mirror in her bedroom, slipping her earrings into her ears… she couldn't help but fret. She hadn't been out to dine alone with a man since that catastrophe with Bertie - with _Lord Hexham_ \- nearly six months ago. And it didn't _matter_ that she had suggested it, that she wanted to 'get back on the horse', that she liked Sir Anthony very much… tonight she was perfectly terrified.

* * *

Anthony was perfectly terrified.

He tried to stand still, for Stewart's sake, as he was dressed, but it was damn near impossible. How long had it been since he had dined with _anyone_, let alone with a young, single woman that he liked? Because he _did_ like her, he realised. Very much.

In between those two on-the-whole very pleasant visits to Locksley, there had been an awful lot of letters, and not just about the estate, either. They had talked about music and literature and art, and even politics, just a touch. Lady Edith was clever and amusing and interesting and _strong_ and she seemed to like him, too.

_She might be a nice chum for you. That's all._ Wasn't that what Diana had said, after that first tentative invitation to the Ritz? And gosh, he'd like that. He'd like that very much indeed.

All he had to do now was not ruin everything before it had had a chance to begin.

* * *

Dinner was… remarkably convivial. She had arrived ten minutes late - a ten minutes that Anthony had spent anxiously pacing a hole in the study's Turkish rug - apologising as she did so. "I'm afraid I ordered my taxi far too late. I'd quite forgotten what London traffic could be like! Do forgive me. Please?"

"Of course." He was so relieved that she had not stood him up that he would have forgiven her anything. "Sherry? Or would you prefer a cocktail? Stewart's been practising."

Lady Edith actually _grinned_ at that. "How exciting! Then I shan't let it have been wasted time."

So they had sipped 'gin and ' - Anthony feeling rather louche about it - and talked quite easily about her business meetings. "Frightfully tedious - all about investments and readership." She shook her head. "I'm only really needed to sign the paperwork afterwards. I'm much better at the actual writing and editing."

"I know you are." The words slipped out before he could stop them. "I've… read all of your columns," he admitted.

"_All_ of them?" Lady Edith looked completely nonplussed. "Before or after you rented Locksley to me?" she wondered.

"Oh, afterwards." His mouth quirked sheepishly. "I… had Stewart find me some back-issues after we met in person. They were… intriguing."

"Heavens!" Lady Edith lifted her eyebrows. "How can one silly adjective be so unobjectionable and so condemnatory at the same time?"

"Oh, no condemnation intended, I assure you."

"Well… what did you _really_ think?" Her voice was small, and Edith hated herself for it. Why should this man's opinion - this man, whom she barely knew! - be so important to her? "I _am_ a professional," she reassured him. "Don't feel you need to tiptoe around me."

"I was most interested."

Her laugh was almost exasperated. "That's hardly any better! You won't offend me, honestly."

"All right." Anthony set aside his glass. "I… don't necessarily agree with everything you write, but… your pieces never fail to make me think, and think carefully, too." He managed a smile. "In any case, you have all of dinner to try to convince me."

"_That_ sounds suspiciously like a challenge," she smiled. "Why don't you start by telling me what you disagree with - and then _I'll_ tell _you_ why you're wrong?"

Stewart, passing outside the drawing room door, heard their shared laughter and sent up a prayer of _fervent_ thanks to his Maker.

* * *

It became something of a habit, after that first lovely evening. Whenever she was in Town, she would telephone and they would dine together, at his house or her flat, and enjoy a lengthy evening of intelligent, amusing conversation.

"I never feel more human," Edith - and it had become just 'Edith' by now - commented at the end of one such dinner, "than when I'm with you."

Anthony frowned. "Well, you always look very human to me."

She rolled her eyes patiently. "Oh, you know what I mean. When I'm at Downton, I'm 'poor Edith', and when I'm at Locksley, I'm 'Mummy', and when I'm in business meetings, I'm 'Lady Edith Crawley, columnist and editor-in-chief' - and it isn't that I don't _enjoy_ those roles - " She stopped and rolled her eyes again - "well, most of them," she corrected, "but… it _is_ nice to just… _be_… for a while, isn't it, rather than… having to put on a mask for the benefit of the people around you?" She sighed. "Spending your life putting on a never-ending series of disguises is rather exhausting."

"Well, what would you think about going out with me… undisguised… somewhere… more public, next time?" The words had slipped out before his brain had had time to process them.

Edith looked a little surprised. "You mean… dining out?"

"Why not?"

"Well… I'd be delighted, of course, but… what's brought on such a sudden change? Don't feel that you're obligated to on my account - we both know that Mrs Cox is the best cook in London."

Anthony shrugged. "Perhaps… I'm tired of disguises, too. Hiding myself away in this house. From what I'm seeing of it… perhaps the world of the living isn't… well, isn't quite so bad."

* * *

The dining room of the Ritz was noisy and full, but all Anthony could focus on was Edith. She had been all he could focus on for the whole evening. Really, she was the most animated person he had ever met, once one had got past the guard she seemed to have perpetually up around her. "And so Sybil had our dressmaker make her a pair of evening pyjamas!" Edith grinned. "I'll never forget how pleased with herself she looked, when she marched into the drawing room wearing them for the first time."

"I suppose your father was furious!"

"Furious? I thought he was going to spontaneously combust!" Edith laughed and took a sip from her glass. "But that was Sybil - she never really cared what anyone thought of her." Her smile faded a little. "I always envied her that."

Anthony's face softened. "You must miss her terribly."

"Yes, I - " And then he saw Edith's face tighten and her shoulders sink in apprehension as her eyes fixed on something behind him.

Anthony turned and saw a young man with brown hair (accompanied by a pretty redhead perhaps five years' his junior), who was watching Edith with precisely the same expression she was wearing. "H-hello, Bertie," Edith managed at last.

He bowed his head briefly. "Lady Edith, hello. How do you do?"

"Very well, thank you. May I introduce Sir Anthony Strallan? Sir Anthony, this is Bertie Pelham, the Marquis of Hexham."

"Lord Hexham."

"Sir Anthony." A pause and then Lord Hexham gestured to his pretty companion. "Lady Edith, Lady Harriet Newbold. Harriet, Lady Edith Crawley." Silence and then, at a press from the redhead's hand, he added, a little awkwardly, "Harriet and I are engaged to be married."

"Oh." Anthony saw Edith's hand tightened momentarily in the tablecloth and then she forced a gracious smile and said, "What lovely news! My congratulations to you both!"

"Thank you." Another sharp bow of the head. "Do excuse us."

Edith watched them go and then stumbled to her feet. "I'm sorry," she managed and her voice was shaking. "I think I'd like to go home now, please."

"Of course." Even with his limited knowledge of her, Anthony could guess what had just gone on. It wasn't difficult. She and Hexham had been close, and he had thrown her over, and she had just had to witness the man she was perhaps still in love with showing off his fiancee in public. "I'll find our coats."

Outside, Anthony hailed a cab while Lady Edith shivered in her insubstantial evening wrap. He ushered her into the back seat first, slid in after her before she could protest, and gave the address of her flat to the driver. As they pulled off down Piccadilly, Lady Edith said, somewhat sharply, "You don't have to come back with me, you know. I'm _perfectly_ capable of getting myself home."

"I know you are," he replied gently. "But you also look _very_ upset and… and I don't think you ought to be alone, just now."

Her face softened. "All right. Th-thank you."

Inside Edith's modern, tastefully decorated flat, she couldn't seem to keep still. "Would you rather I left?" Anthony asked, watching her pace across the rug, arms folded tightly about herself.

"N-no," she whispered, and he saw the silvery glimmer of tear-tracks on her cheeks. Silently, he offered her his handkerchief; she took it with a look of tired gratitude and mopped at her face.

"You and Lord Hexham… know each other quite well, I take it?" he asked gently.

Edith looked almost blindly up at him. "Y-yes. N-no. I - we… we were quite good friends at one time." She chuckled bitterly. "He asked me to marry him, last year."

Anthony's brows flew up. "Heavens. What happened?"

"Oh… we realised that… that we weren't quite suited to each other."

It was no answer at all, and they both knew it.

"I see."

"I'm sorry." Edith's voice cracked. "It's… it's a rather complicated story."

_Ah. A complicated story? _A sudden thought struck, and he took a chance: "Lady Edith… is it because of Miss Marigold?"

Her wide, shocked eyes confirmed it. "Wh-what do you mean?" she tried.

"Did he end the engagement because… because he found out that she is your… your daughter?"

It was pointless to try to deny it any longer. He saw her fight and lose the battle with her natural caution, and then her shoulders slumped. "How long have you known?" she whispered, defeated.

"I suspected after Armistice Day. That conversation that we had, at Locksley, after dinner? Your brother-in-law, and you and I?" His mouth quirked. "You were so… so _very_ devoted to her, so very frightened of what poison your father might have been dripping into my ear…" Edith continued to watch him, silently. Slowly, Anthony lowered himself into the armchair. "And then I read your columns and I was sure. An eight month break from writing? Going to the Continent for your health? And then coming back and writing columns on… on con-contraception and working mothers?" His voice was very, very gentle, and very, very sad. "And… she's the very image of you, when you think about it."

Edith was silent for a moment and then her shoulders began to shake with sudden, heaving sobs. "Oh, my _dear_…" He reached for her with his good hand, and Edith took it and squeezed it and then let it go again, almost pushing it away from her.

"Thank you, for being so very discreet." She fumbled in her pocket for her handkerchief and wiped her eyes. "You're r-right, of course. Bertie felt I'd been dishonest with him, and I had."

"Will you tell me what happened?"

"It all started with the Nineteenth Amendment, I suppose." Edith perched on the arm of her fireside chair, staring into the flames. "I… was trying to rile Papa, and I wrote to _The Times_ about it, about how unfair it is that women here can't vote, not until they're thirty or…" She shrugged and took a breath. "_Anyway_, they published it and… the editor of _The Sketch_ saw it, and asked me to write for them_._ His name was Michael Gregson and I adored him from the very first moment we met." Her chin trembled. "He… he was the first man who'd ever… taken that sort of interest in me, you see, and God, I _loved _him for it." Her hand searched for the cigarette case and matches on the mantelpiece, and she lit a gasper with shaking fingers and took a long drag from it before continuing. "He was married, of course. His wife was insane, in an asylum, and Michael decided that he'd go to Germany and get a divorce, so that he could marry me. But before he went, we… we made love. And Marigold is the result. I went to Switzerland with my Aunt Rosamund for the pregnancy, and stayed for a while afterwards, and once it was safe, I arranged for her to come back to England. And then I passed her off as my ward." Her chin wobbled again and then hardened. "I don't regret it, you know. Not Michael and _certainly_ not Marigold."

"What happened to him? To Mr Gregson?"

"He died." Her face was strained with sadness as she elaborated: "Got into a stupid fight with these Brownshirts we seem to be hearing about so often these days. We didn't find out until… oh, about a year after it had all happened."

"I'm sorry. And… Lord Hexham?"

"Bertie didn't find out the truth about her until after he'd proposed to me." She tucked a curl of loose hair behind her ear and finally chanced a look at him. "My - my sister Mary told him and of course he was v-very angry that _I_ hadn't told him everything right from the start." Edith shook her head. "And now I've done the same _bloody_ thing again!"

"No. No, not at all - "

"We'll be out of Locksley by the end of the month," she promised flatly. "I'm terribly sorry to have inconvenienced you - "

"_What?_"

Edith stopped, staring. "Well… you won't want us there now, surely?" Her voice was very slow, as if she were explaining something to a child, or to someone very stupid indeed. "We're a ticking time-bomb, Anthony. At any time, someone else could draw the exact same conclusion as you have and there could be a scandal and Locksley could get dragged into it, _you_ could get dragged into it and -"

"I'd rather that than you and Marigold be homeless!" he protested.

"We won't be." She gestured around her with the hand that held the gasper. "There's the flat, and my parents would let us go back to Downton, if I asked. Don't worry, we won't be reduced to sleeping in doorways."

"But… you're settled there." He tried to sound reasonable, but he knew that he hadn't quite managed it. "The little one certainly is. I don't want you to have to give all that up. Truly. That's the last thing I want."

"That's very sweet of you, Anthony, but…"

"Look here," he insisted. "I'm getting into this with my eyes wide open, aren't I? And… we've been such… such good chums, my dear. I'd hate to give that up."

She gave him a very tiny smile. "So would I," she admitted.

"Would you? Would you really?"

"Yes." She nodded. "That's the last thing _I_ want."

"Well, then. We shan't. Locksley shall be yours, for _quite_ as long as you want it." He stood and took her hand and kissed the fingertips, very soothing, very old-fashioned. "And now I shall leave you to sleep. Please don't worry any more. Goodnight, my dear."

"Yes. Goodnight. And… thank you, Sir Anthony."

* * *

She cried on the train home. Luckily, she had managed to find a compartment to herself in First Class and could sob uninterrupted.

He had been unbearably sweet, of course. There had been no disgust, no recriminations, no insults. She oughtn't to have expected anything else from him, really. Perhaps breaking with Bertie had knocked her about more than she had thought.

Still, it was one thing to _suspect_ something like that about a woman and quite another to have all one's suspicions bluntly and boldly confirmed. Once he had had time to consider everything, he would realise that she had been entirely right: her staying at Locksley would do neither of them any good. She had been stupidly naive, she realised that now. If he had been able to work the whole thing out, then others would be able to, too, and then the whole world would come crashing down on her head and on his, and he would never want to speak to her ever again.

Edith thought she could bear many things, but not that. Never that.

When she reached Locksley that evening, she wrote a letter. And then - like all women in distress - she telephoned her Mama.

* * *

"I'm sorry, my lady," Mrs Dale said at the library door.

"Hmm?" Edith asked, eyes still trained on the words she had just typed. "What is it, Mrs Dale?"

"Telephone call for you, my lady. Sir Anthony."

Very carefully, Lady Edith took off her reading glasses, folded them and set them down on the desk. "I see. Th-thank you, Mrs Dale. I'll be there in just a moment."

She ought to have expected this. Doubtless he'd want to get the whole matter sorted out as quickly as possible and that would mean speaking to her in person. She had been a fool, really, to expect that they could sort the whole thing out by letter.

"H-hello?"

"Hello." He sounded really quite cross, but cross in a way that could only be managed by someone who was really very upset. "What on _Earth_ is _this_ meant to mean?" he asked, and she heard a sound as if he had slapped a letter down on the desk in front of him. "I thought that we had _agreed_ \- "

"I know," Edith interrupted. "I _know_. But… Anthony, it really isn't sensible for Marigold and I to stay here."

"Why? I've told you, I don't care about your reputation or any scandal or - "

"Because I've done the _stupidest_ thing imaginable, Anthony!" She could feel her face crumpling and knew that tears would not be far behind. "You've been so _very_ kind to me, and like an idiot child just out of the schoolroom, _I've fallen in love with you_!"

There was a long, long silence.

"_What_?" He sounded thoroughly stunned.

There was a crackle down the line and then: "I've fallen in love with you," she whispered again.

Another of those very long, very awkward silences and then Anthony said, quietly: "I'm sorry. I need to go. Goodbye."

* * *

_I'm sorry. I need to go. Goodbye._

For the hundredth time since boarding the train at King's Cross, Anthony checked his watch and cursed himself. Really, he had been a prize idiot! He'd managed to say nothing of what he had been feeling and do everything likely to hurt Edith.

He'd just been so overwhelmed, that was all. He'd never thought any woman would ever again say that she loved him - not like that, not in the way that Edith had so clearly meant. He'd _certainly_ never expected a woman like Edith to fall for him. She was so lively, after all, and beautiful and clever. Not like him at all.

And now all he could hope was that he could reach her before she had had time to talk herself out of it.

* * *

It was typical, really, wasn't it?

She ought to have made her peace with it now, she supposed. Some people in the world were just destined to live alone. First Michael, then Bertie, and now Anthony. There was just something about her that made men want to leave.

"Nothing to be done about it," she croaked to herself and tilted her chin to tuck it against the cushion she had clutched to her chest. Mama had arrived an hour or so ago and carted Marigold off for the weekend - "You just need a bit of time to yourself to have a good cry," she had said - but just now, Edith was longing for the distraction her daughter could always provide.

Still, she would be all right eventually. She would pick herself up and dust herself off and pack up the house and go back to Downton and start to plan how she might spend the rest of her life. Perhaps staying in Yorkshire wasn't the best plan. She might go to London, set up home permanently at the flat. There _were_ schools in the capital, after all, and at least she'd be close to the magazine offices.

And hopefully, she'd never have to see Anthony Strallan again.

"You've been crying again."

His voice at the doorway was so completely unexpected that it took Edith what felt like several minutes to look up at him. He was still wearing his coat, twisting his hat awkwardly in his good hand, his face creased in concern. As if in a trance, Edith stood and set down her cushion and brushed back her damp curls from her face.

"Yes," she agreed eventually.

"Not - not on my account, I hope?" he worried, attempting a small smile.

"Why have you come here, Anthony?" She took in a deep, shuddering breath. "You were _more_ than clear on the telephone, I assure you. I didn't need you to come here and - " She stopped, forcing her voice to calm. "I completely understand, of course. Just look at us!" She gestured between them, a half-hysterical laugh slipping out. "Did you ever see a more mismatched pair? You're a hero who fought for your country. I'm an unwed mother who went to bed with a married man. There is nothing I could _possibly_ do to deserve you - and you wouldn't want me even if there were. And that's why I need to leave." Her voice broke. "I'm sorry. I'm _so_ sorry."

Slowly, a step at a time, Anthony approached her. His good arm came around her before she could protest and tugged her to his chest and Edith did not know whether she wanted to pull him closer or push him away until he began to speak. "Oh, my sweet girl," he sighed tiredly. "Do you know what I see, when I look at us? An old, dull, _crippled_ codger - and a beautiful, strong, clever woman. You're right - we _are_ terribly mismatched."

"You - you think I'm c-clever?" she hiccuped, and when she dared to look up at him, she saw that he was smiling that lopsided smile that she had grown to adore.

"I do. And if I were twenty years' younger, and unwounded, then I'd show you just how worthy of a man's love you are."

"I don't want you twenty years' younger," Edith confessed damply against his waistcoat. "I don't want you unwounded. I don't wish for you to be _anything_ other than what you are." Her arms wound around him, underneath his coat and his jacket, and hugged him tightly to her, not caring how improper it was, not caring even that Mrs Dale or Stewart or Polly could walk in at any moment and find them like this. "I - I just _love_ you, Anthony."

"I've loved you," Anthony heard himself say, "ever since you walked down those stairs the first time I came here, and shook my hand and looked me in the eye." He sighed. "It had been… _so_ long since anyone had done that properly, you know. And now… well, if it comes down to losing you or keeping you, I know which I'll choose."

"Keeping me?" Edith sniffed wetly.

"Yes." His chin tilted and she felt his lips graze the top of her head. "Edith… darling, we know each other so little, still. You'll want time and - and space to be certain that I'm what you might want. But… don't go away, will you? Please don't go away."

And Edith knows what her answer will be. She is certain of it, right down through her bones, in the same way that she had been certain, when Marigold had been laid in her arms for the very first time, that she would do anything, fight anyone, to keep her.

So she does not hesitate as she looks up and puts her arms around his surprised neck, and whispers into his ear, laughing and crying all at once: "No. I shan't go away."


	4. The Subjection of Women

**AN: It hasn't been a great couple of days here, folks. UK politics just now has meant I spent this afternoon in a mire of helpless, shaking, tearful rage. So, in the interests of doing something a bit more productive, I'm sharing something that might give a couple of people a couple of minutes' enjoyment. **

**This little one shot was actually sketched out as I was writing my fic 'The Sadder But Wiser Girl', and is notable for featuring neither Anthony nor Edith! I wanted to know more about Anthony's parents and their marriage, and what that might have been like… and this was the result. **

**Six months after their wedding, Sir Phillip and Lady Strallan hit some stumbling blocks…**

**(For the purposes of this fic, I'm pretending that J.S. Mill's _The Subjection of Women,_ from which both Nancy and Phillip quote here, was published in '68, rather than '69. Forgive me?)**

* * *

**Locksley, November 1868**

"Hello, my darling!" Nancy Strallan halted in the library doorway, her cheerful smile fading as she saw her husband in his accustomed armchair. "Whatever are you doing sitting here in the dark?"

"I was waiting for you."

"Waiting for - " Stopping as she noticed the lack of an answering smile on his own dear face, she changed direction and asked instead: "Phillip, whatever's the matter?"

"It's the twentieth today."

Nancy frowned. "Yes, I know. I - " Her face fell as realisation struck. "Oh, _Phillip._ The school visit." She removed her hat and held it in front of her, apparently unsure what to do next. "I'm sorry. It just… slipped my mind. Georgina Blake sent round a note this morning, asking if I'd like to go with her to her Phil. and Lit. Society - and you were gone so early this morning and… and I suppose that we just… lost track of time."

Phillip did not move, simply looked up at her. "Well, that's that, then."

Nancy inhaled, an odd expression crossing her face. Quickly, she crossed the threshold, and shut the door behind her. "I sense that I am about to be scolded," she commented lightly, as she reached for the box of tapers on the mantle-piece and began to light the gas lamps.

"I'm sorry you view it in those terms."

"How else _can_ I view it?"

Phillip stood and went to the window, and drew the curtains. This done, he stayed where he was, hands clasped tightly behind him. After a moment, he spoke again and his voice was cold and brittle. "I don't often request that you accompany me to county events, you know. One would think that once or twice a year _would_ be manageable."

Nancy began to pull her gloves off, trying to ignore the fact that her hands were shaking. "Haven't I already apologised? I forgot. It wasn't intentional." Seeking to absolve herself, she pointed out, "I doubt the children even noticed. They would have been eager enough to see _you_ \- they barely know who _I_ am."

"Oh, _really_?" Phillip snapped, whirling around. He gestured towards the occasional table, where a vase of flowers and a covered plate stood. "Flowers for you, cut by the children from the garden they have started growing at the school." With a jerk of his hand, he uncovered the plate. "Scones, baked for _you_ by the older girls in their cookery lesson. They had heard that you have a sweet tooth."

Nancy lifted a hand to her mouth but Phillip had not finished. "I have a _duty_ towards these people, and as my wife that duty is _yours_ too! They ought to be able to depend on our _care_, Anne!" He shook his head as she flinched at the use of her full name. "And instead, you were off gallivanting _God_ knows where, with _God_ knows whom!"

"As I have said," Nancy stated, voice trembling as she tried to keep her temper, "I was at the York Ladies' Philosophy and Literature Society with Georgina Blake." Her lip curled. "But I suppose that _that_ is not appropriate any more, either? I suppose that the county would be _scandalised_ by the idea of a baronet's wife with half a brain!" Sweeping him a low, sarcastic curtsey, she sneered, "Please, forgive me, sir - I shall ensure, in future, that I restrict myself to smelling salts and securing an heir!"

Twin red flags of fury were burning in her husband's cheeks. "If it please you to paint me as the cruel, domineering husband, my _dearest_ one, then so be it, but you are fully aware that _that _is not what I meant." Bracing his hands on his desk, he leant over it. "Our station in life provides us with many privileges, but those privileges come with obligations, and if we abandon them, if we refuse to do right by those who depend on us… then we become no better than the Louises and the Marie Antoinettes of this world! You _must_ understand that. I thought you did." He sighed, weary and defeated. "Had I realised that you did _not_, I might have - " Phillip managed to stop himself just in time.

"You might," his wife finished quietly, tipping her chin back to blink back cross tears, "have thought better of marrying a common country curate's daughter?"

"My dear, I - "

"No," she interrupted, voice shaking. "I _perfectly_ agree with you. Will you excuse me? I must go and change for dinner."

"Nancy…"

The library door shut with a quiet, reproachful snap behind her.

* * *

Dinner was taken in utter silence. Jamieson the butler had never known so quiet a dinner, not since his master had married her ladyship, anyway. Usually, mealtimes at Locksley were accompanied by conversation and debate and laughter and - sometimes - gentle, promising flirting. Not tonight.

As soon as pudding had been removed, her ladyship excused herself and Jamieson, serving brandy to Sir Phillip in the library, heard her quiet footsteps tapping disconsolately up the staircase.

* * *

When Phillip woke in the early light, the other side of the bed was empty. "Is Lady Strallan already down?" he asked Jamieson in the breakfast room.

"Yes, sir." Jamieson's look was sidelong. "Her ladyship left about half an hour ago."

"Left? Did she say where she was going?"

Jamieson winced at his master's sharp tone and piercing glare. "I am afraid not, sir. She said that she was going out and - " Jamieson blushed and finished, somewhat unhappily, "and that she'd see us when she saw us. I - I felt a little uneasy at the time, sir, but I - I couldn't - "

"Couldn't forbid her ladyship from leaving." Phillip pinched the bridge of his nose tiredly. "No, of course not. Thank you, Jamieson."

"Sir."

As Jamieson reached the threshold, he was halted by a sudden, anxious question from his master. "She - she _was_… in her usual good spirits when she left, I trust, Jamieson?"

"Oh, yes, sir." Jamieson turned and gave a small bow. "Quite as cheerful as ever she was."

Phillip forced a smile. "Good. Good. That'll be all, Jamieson."

"Thank you, sir."

* * *

She wouldn't have gone far. Of course she wouldn't. His wife had a temper, but she didn't hold grudges and she didn't make decisions on impulse, either.

Phillip tried to ignore the prickling in his gut and the persistent dry sourness in his mouth. The morning had been well enough - he had managed the accounts, done some reading - but now it was teatime, and beginning to rain outside, and _still_ she had not come back.

He had behaved like the worst brute in Creation, last night. He _had_ scolded. He thought at one point he might have mentioned Marie Antoinette. _Marie Antoinette, for God's sake!_ And all because he had been feeling neglected and embarrassed by her absence at what, really, had been a trivial afternoon engagement.

And now… now, she mightn't come back at all.

"Hello, Jamieson!" He'd have recognised that sweet, friendly, trill _anywhere_. "Heavens, it's raining cats and dogs out there! I came back through the orchard and told Mr Samuels to go home early - no use whatsoever him catching a chill just for the sake of a bit of pruning!"

For a moment, he sat perfectly still, stunned by his own relief, and then, at the sound of her boots clicking down the library passage, he managed to stir himself and rise in time to say, as she entered, "You're home. Thank the _Lord_!"

"Oh, hello. Yes, I am." Avoiding his eye, Nancy pulled the pin out of her rain-splattered hat and took it off, then began removing her gloves.

"Where in _God's_ name have you been, sweetheart? I was worried sick!"

She still wouldn't look at him. "That wasn't my intention, I assure you. I - I spent the day at the school, if you must know."

"I _beg_ your pardon?"

Nancy blushed and her next words came out in a rush. "Well, I went to apologise for my absence yesterday, and to thank the children for their lovely gifts… and then Miss Dawson - you know, the headmistress? - asked me if I'd like a tour of the classrooms, and by that time it was getting late, so I stayed for luncheon with the children, and then I read with the little ones. They're terribly bright." She tipped her chin back solemnly and added, very slowly and clearly, meeting his eyes for the first time, "But… I want you to understand that I went because it was the right thing to do, not because - because I'd been scolded into it. I… I didn't want you to think that I was doing it just to get back on your good side. If I hadn't stayed so long, I wouldn't have ended up saying anything to you. I promise." She turned aside and laid her gloves down on the side table. "In any case… I'm very sorry I'm late for tea. I hope you haven't been waiting for me too dreadfully long."

Phillip approached, very slowly. "It is… _I_ who should be apologising. And not for something as trivial as a cold pot of tea, either." Very carefully, he lifted her cold hands, one after the other, and kissed them. "Yesterday," he murmured, "I said some _unforgivable_ things to you, my darling - "

"Phillip…"

"Let me finish. I said some unforgivable things to you, which I should not even have _thought_, let alone allowed to pass my lips. I… was jealous, if you must know."

"Jealous?" she whispered and he nodded.

"Mmm. Of course, I do believe that we have a duty towards our tenants and that we them our attention, but… I do _not_ believe I would have been so rude if… if I had not been so damned _envious_ of your Phil. and Lit. Society, that it seemed to distract you enough to make you forget me." He shot her a wry glance. "And I am fully aware that that is _not_ what happened, and that thinking it makes me sound like a callow, greedy youth but…" He sighed, shrugging. "I told you when I proposed that I was a selfish, selfish man, Nancy."

"No." His wife shook her head. "_Never_ that, Phillip."

"You are much too easy on me," he sighed. "In any case, I want to make one thing very, _very_ clear: I have never and _could_ never regret marrying you."

Nancy pulled one of her hands from his grasp and brushed away a tear from beneath one of her. "And here was I, wanting to tell you _precisely_ the same thing. Darling, you were _absolutely_ right. I _should_ have been there with you. I _don't_ want to be a wife who… simply _takes_ and gives nothing back - one of those women who live aimless, _purposeless_ lives. I… I am _so_ glad to be Lady Strallan, with _all_ the duties and obligations that that entails."

"And I am _honoured_ to be your husband. I was cross and overbearing and - "

"And _I_ was cross because I knew you were right." Nancy chuckled lightly. "What a pair we are! Now, how did you spend your day?"

"Oh, a book I had ordered from Hatchard's arrived this morning, so after I had met with Robertson, I permitted myself an hour or two of leisure to read it."

"Oh? What is it?"

"A most interesting and instructive volume." He lifted it from the window-seat and handed it to her. Nancy looked at the cover for a moment and then blinked up at him, nonplussed. On the frontispiece, in plain black type were the words _The Subjection of Women._

"You're reading John Stewart Mill?" Nancy whispered faintly.

"Yes." Phillip turned away to pour her a cup of tea, then remembering how long it had been standing, halted, fidgeting awkwardly with his hands as he replaced the pot on the tray. In a slightly embarrassed voice, he coughed, "He's the MP for City and Westminster, you know. Made rather a lot of noise about the Reform Act last year - wanted to change some of the wording."

Nancy let out a small, choked laugh. "Yes. I know."

Phillip's mouth quirked. "Of course. He… shares a lot of your views, as I understand it."

"He does. And… are you enjoying what he has to say?"

"His arguments are… very persuasive. I found one part particularly striking - may I?" He extended his hand for the book and Nancy returned it mutely. For a moment, he was silent, scanning through pages, until he reached the passage he had been seeking. "Ah, here it is…" He cleared his throat and began to read aloud: "'_It is the sole case, now that slavery has been abolished, in which a human being in the plenitude of every faculty is delivered up to the tender mercies of another human being, in the hope forsooth that this other will use the power solely for the good of the person subjected to it. Marriage is the only actual bondage known to our law. There remain no legal slaves, except the mistress of every house.'_" He lowered the book, shamefaced. "It occurred me, while I was reading, that - that this had some bearing on - on our life together."

Gently, Nancy tugged the book from his hands and softly kissed his cheek. "You've never treated me that way, Phillip. I have no complaints to make of you save when I am feeling sulky and caged, and most unjustly blaming you."

Her husband's face creased unhappily. "I don't wish you to feel that you are living in a _cage_."

"I know. It isn't your fault. It's simply… before we married, my life was so - so - "

"Carefree," Phillip finished, shrugging his shoulders.

"No," Nancy sighed. "My life was so _full_ and now - I have the house to run, my charity committees every couple of months, entertaining… and that's it. You - you are _so_ busy, all of the time - darling, that isn't a criticism," she added hastily, as her husband's face fell even further. She shook her head. "You talked of envy, a moment ago. Well, I get _jealous _of you, too. You… you don't talk to me about the farms, or the finances anymore. Not in the way you used to in your letters. You went to that farmers' market last week and I'd have _loved_ to come too, but y-you didn't invite me and I didn't want to presume - "

"I didn't want you to feel _obliged_ to come to those silly things, and I thought you would feel that way if I asked," Phillip sighed. "I - when we married, my intention was never to tie you down, to - to completely fill your life up with me and nothing else."

Nancy nodded. "So… when you _did_ ask me to be at the school visit… I ought to have realised that you truly thought it important."

Phillip's expression was sheepish. "I haven't been terribly good at making myself clear, have I? Yes, I wanted a wife and a wife's support, but… I wanted you to have the time to… to pursue your own interests, too - art, and books and - and politics, even, if you wanted and - "

"Darling, if I didn't want to be tied to you, then I would never have accepted your proposal! I married you because I hoped that together, we might be _better _\- _more_ than we each were on our own. Where does Mill - " She opened the book again and began to flick over pages. "Here!" she exclaimed triumphantly, and pointed out a passage to him:

_On the contrary, when each of two persons, instead of being a nothing, is a something; when they are attached to one another, and are not too much unlike to begin with; the constant partaking in the same things, assisted by their sympathy, draws out the latent capacities of each for being interested in the things which were at first interesting only to the other; and works a gradual assimilation of the tastes and characters to one another, partly by the insensible modification of each, but more by a real enriching of the two natures, each acquiring the tastes and capacities of the other in addition to its own. _

"You've already read it," Phillip realised.

With a nonchalant shrug, Nancy nodded. "Last month." Leaning up as if about to impart a great secret, she confided, "It's been on the bookshelf in my day-room ever since."

"You mean that I needn't have bought another copy?"

Nancy's mouth twitched. "No, my darling."

"Well," Sir Phillip said firmly, "_that_ is the final straw. I - I would like your companionship, Nancy, your _true_ companionship. More than anything. What - what would help us achieve it, do you suppose?"

"I - I would like to visit the Home Farm with you tomorrow." She smiled. "And… well, I - I understand that the Liberal candidate's meant to be r-rather a good speaker. He's holding a public meeting on Wednesday. W-will you escort me?"

"For you, I will endure even the Liberal candidate, my sweet one - and what's more, I shall try my very hardest to enjoy it." His look became almost impish as his arm wound around her back and reeled her in. "Now come here, Lady Strallan. You're soaked through."

"It started raining on the walk back." Nancy could hear her voice shaking - but not with fear. Never with anything like it, not around Phillip.

"Mmm, I can see that. Only one solution." His voice was low as he pressed two kisses to the base of her neck over her blouse, neatly lining them up along her collar-bone. His fingers were already working at the buttons. "We must get you out of these wet things, my dear."

"O-oh?"

"Indubitably." The base of her spine tingled at the low rumble of his voice. "I'd be considered a frightfully neglectful spouse if I allowed you to catch a chill, now, wouldn't I?"

Jamieson, coming up to refresh the tea tray some ten minutes later, found the library door firmly locked.


	5. Fireworks

**AN: Another addition to the gazillions of stories out there exploring Anthony and Edith getting together after the failed wedding. This one imagines that Edith has been travelling for several years and is now back in England, a celebrated writer. Also, Sybil lives - because why not?**

* * *

The Pearsons were having a Bonfire Night party at their house. _Everyone_ who was everyone had been invited, and no surprise. Roger Pearson was one of Parliament's most innovative back-benchers, and his wife was a glitteringly intelligent and beautiful socialite. They knew everyone worth knowing, and it was considered (as Sybil reminded Edith firmly) a great honour to be invited to one of their social gatherings.

Edith sighed, frowning down at the invitation. It was times like this that she wished she had just stayed in Cairo when she had the chance. No one held silly fireworks' parties _there_, where one would be required to dress up, and eat tiny morsels of finger-food and drink champagne and be scintillating company all night. "But you can't say _no_!" Sybil persisted, rocking baby Saoirse in one arm, and fixing her sister with a severe glare. "If I can't go, then you simply _have_ to!"

"Mary and Matthew are going," Edith shrugged, feeling unreasonably irritated. After all, it was Sybil's fault she'd come rushing home in the first place - what else could she have done after Mama's panicked telegram the night she'd given birth to Saoirse? "Why do _I_ have to make a cake of myself as well?"

Sybil tutted. "Really, darling, I know you've been busy with the book and everything, but all work and no play will make Jill a _very_ dull girl, I promise you."

"Hello, pot," her sister replied briefly, "kettle here - you're charred." Sybil had found a nursing position at a hospital near her and Tom's house in London and had recently been promoted to Sister. Edith counted herself lucky if she saw her sister for dinner once a fortnight.

"Lay off her, love," Tom sighed, lifting his wife's free hand to his lips to kiss it. "If Edith doesn't want to go to this party, then she doesn't have to. Whatever happened to a woman's right _not_ to socialise?"

His sister-in-law bestowed a grateful smile on him. "Thank you, Tom."

"I just worry that you aren't leaving the house enough!" Sybil sighed, and kissed the top of Saoirse's head. "Isn't that right, _mo chroí_?"

Saoirse babbled happily. "See?" Sybil grinned wickedly. "Your niece is in perfect agreement with me."

Edith narrowed her eyes, half-amused, half-irritated. "Don't you have a shift to get to, _Sister_ Branson?"

* * *

The dress was, admittedly, very pretty. So pretty, in fact, that it made _Edith_ look pretty. She wasn't running herself down. She knew herself to be striking, strong-featured, taking… but not _pretty. _Even Anthony -

She stopped, briefly, taking in a sharp breath as the stab of pain hit her, as it always did when Anthony Strallan crossed her mind. _Really. How pathetic!_ She needed to stop being so silly. His name, or the thought of him, or a man's blonde head in the street needed to stop making her wince. Edith let out that breath, shakily.

Even Anthony had never called her pretty. _Lovely_, yes. _Sweet_, frequently. But never _pretty_. And really, if there were anyone in the world who would ever think that of her… well, it would have been Anthony.

In _this _dress, however, she _glowed. _Pinkish-red chiffon, over a darker red underdress, bordered in silver sequins, one shoulder held up by a thin strap, the other swathed in a chiffon scarf attached to the frock. Matching red shoes completed the outfit. It was rather daringly short, too, and Edith had purchased a new red lipstick to go with it. Well, if one was to make a fool of oneself in public, one might as well go the whole hog. As she picked up her clutch from the bed, Edith reflected that she wasn't as apprehensive as she might have been. In fact, she was rather looking forward to it.

Several of her new London friends had been in touch over the last few days, to find out if she had been invited to the Pearsons', and if she planned to attend - and knowing that she would have champions there alongside her made her think that the evening might not be a complete loss after all. Even better, she had heard that Mary and Matthew were _not _planning to attend. "Matthew's taking George and I to the public fireworks at Richmond Park," Mary had said over tea the day before. To Edith's surprise, she had sounded almost pleased about it, which was a lot for Mary.

The Pearsons' lovely London home was in Islington - a Victorian town house, where everything seemed to be large: large garden, large hallway, large, airy reception rooms. These currently seemed crammed to the rafters with people, but within thirty seconds of being admitted, Lucy Pearson had descended on Edith in a cloud of rose scent, and kissed her cheeks enthusiastically. "Edith, darling, we're _so _glad that you could come!"

"Thank you for inviting me, Lucy. My sister and brother-in-law send their apologies - they were otherwise engaged."

"Not at all." Lucy took firm hold of Edith's hand. "Now, come along, my dear, there are absolutely _heaps_ of people that I want to introduce you to - all you bookworms seem to have gravitated towards the library, no surprises, really, I suppose, but…"

Edith let herself be dragged away in the direction of the library, smiling at Roger Pearson, who waved cheerily at her, as she did so.

The library was likewise absolutely crowded with people, who all seemed to be talking at once. But Edith saw none of them - none of them save the tall, blonde, older gentleman who stood by the window, engaged in conversation with, of all people, Hugh Gervas. Edith let out a sudden noise - mingled shock and _agony_ \- and Lucy shot her a querying glance. "All right, my dear?"

"Y-yes," Edith managed. Then: "I… I didn't know Sir Hugh would be here, that's all."

This was _precisely_ the wrong thing to say. "Oh, you know darling Hugh, do you?" Lucy clicked her fingers. "Of _course_! Your people live up in Yorkshire, near his neck of the woods, don't they? I always forget."

"Mmm," Edith nodded, and before she could protest, Lucy had dragged her forwards.

"Hugh!" beamed Lucy. "Look who I found on the front step!"

Hugh Gervas turned, and his face brightened at the sight of Edith. "Lady Edith! Hello! Gosh, don't you look fine!"

"Hello, Sir Hugh," Edith smiled, trying not to look at Hugh's erstwhile conversational companion. "Thank you."

"Well, I'll leave you to chat," Lucy said, squeezing Hugh's elbow. "Enjoy yourselves!"

Hugh shoved one hand uneasily into the pocket of his trousers, the other fiddling anxiously at his white tie. "Well, I think I'll go and find Claudia. She'll be tickled to see you again."

"Yes," Edith forced a smile. "I'd like that."

Hugh slipped away, relieved. Slowly, unwillingly, Edith turned her eyes, for the first time in five years, onto Anthony Strallan. "Hello."

He bowed his head. "Lady Edith. H-how have you been?" His voice had not changed one bit. Of course, why should it have? Rather… her memory of his voice had been so precise, so _powerful_…

"Oh, you know," she managed. "Travelling. Cairo." Her mouth and her brain didn't seem to be working properly.

"Yes," he agreed. "I - I've read your book. Very interesting." He smiled a little sadly. "You're so _very_ talented, my - " He swallowed the last syllable of what he had been about to say and she saw his uninjured hand clench tightly at his side.

"Thank you." Her voice came out louder and brusquer than she had been planning on. "H-how's Locksley?" It seemed too close to the bone to ask him about himself. The estate, she felt, was the next best thing. Ironic, that she would choose the place which might have been her home - the place that she still loved most in the world - as a neutral topic of conversation.

"Splendid." He shook his head. "We've… weathered a few storms, and… we're in a good position."

Edith nodded. Heavens, she felt numb all over. "Of course. I never doubted that you would be. You… you must be very proud."

"I've always been proud of Locksley." He cleared his throat. "You look very well, anyway. Very j-jolly. I'm glad."

Edith tipped her chin back and sniffed out a weak, watery laugh. "Well, when you've had your fill of crying, eventually you have to start laughing."

"Have things really been so awful?" he wondered, a shadow crossing his face. "I'm sure that can't be true."

"What makes you so _sure_?" she bit out, harshly. Already, she could feel tears prickling sharply at the backs of her eyes. She wouldn't cry. She _would not _cry. Quite apart from anything else, it would make her carefully-applied mascara run, and she'd end up looking frightful. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction. "What makes you so sure that I've been having a marvellous life, Anthony?"

Anthony gestured briefly at his sling. "Well, isn't anything better than - "

"Don't," she hissed in an angry undertone. "Don't you _dare_ start all that again. You push me away, and I'm meant to _thank_ you for it?"

"Edith - "

A hand touched Edith's arm gently. "Edith, my dear?" It was Claudia, casting anxious glances between she and Anthony. With an effort and a shuddering breath, Edith controlled her temper and fixed a pleased expression on her face. "Hello, Claudia. How lovely to see you again!"

"Isn't it?" Claudia slipped her arm into Edith's. "Why don't you come away and we can chat about all your adventures? Cairo, honestly! Only _you_!"

Edith let herself be drawn away, not even sparing a backward glance for Anthony.

With a low whistle, Hugh settled herself against the wall next to him. "Well, that looked… intense."

Anthony's jaw tightened. "Yes, well… She's still… cross with me."

"Whatever did you expect, old boy?" Hugh asked. "She was in love with you and you stood up in front of all her family and friends and shattered her heart into about a million pieces." Anthony winced. It all sounded so unpleasantly blunt when Hugh phrased it like that.

"I made the most sensible decision for both of us," he corrected, and although his voice was light, there was an undercurrent of steel there that Hugh had rarely heard.

"Sensible? Is _that_ what you call it? Rot."

Anthony gritted his teeth. "Think about it, Hugh. Since we parted ways, she's become a successful, celebrated traveller and writer. She's an _adventuress! _Little girls are going to read her book, and think 'Gosh, that's how I want to spend my life, too!' She's inspiring a whole generation!" He took a deep gulp of his drink. "And if she'd married me, she'd have had no more to say for her life than an aged, wounded husband, and a brood of mewling brats, and an eternity of domestic drudgery. Now, which sounds better to you?"

Hugh shook his head. "Do you know what your problem is, Anthony? You're so cut and dried, all of the time. You aren't helpless, no matter how much you like to pretend to be. Quite the opposite, if you ask me, and - "

"Come along everyone!" Lucy Pearson's cheerful voice trilled across the room. "Fireworks in the garden!"

* * *

Claudia Gervas was a marvel. Edith had always liked her, right from that first dinner that Anthony had taken her to, eleven years ago now. Claudia was one of those women who was always so perfectly poised, so elegant, so aware of all those subtle little undercurrents in a room full of people. As soon as she had pulled Edith away from Hugh and Anthony, she'd tucked them away in a side-room, fetched Edith a glass of champagne, and squeezed her shoulder tightly in almost motherly reassurance. "Better?" she'd asked eventually, once Edith had downed her drink and shuddered out a few brief tears.

"Yes, I think so." Edith checked her make-up in the mirror and gave Claudia a shaky smile. "I was just… shocked, that's all. Silly of me."

"An awful coincidence, I'm afraid," Claudia sighed apologetically. "He didn't used to like society much, even before the - well, even before what happened between you. But Lucy and Roger said we could bring along any friends we liked, and Hugh - well, Hugh's always worried about him."

Edith nodded. "I'm glad. I - I do _mean_ that, Claudia." This, at Lady Gervas's doubtful expression. "I - I'm glad that he has people to - to take care of him."

"And what about you?" Claudia wondered, eyebrow arched.

Edith huffed out a laugh. "I'm my family's black sheep, Claudia, I - "

The door swung open and Lucy's excited, flushed face poked around the frame. "Fireworks in the garden, you two! Come on!"

* * *

The cold night air was a relief, Edith found - a balm to her shaken nerves. If she were the sort of woman who believed in that sort of thing, she might have thought she'd cursed herself, thinking about him earlier that evening. As it was, Edith thought it was all of a piece with her usual bad luck. And now… he was standing just a few people behind her. She could feel it, as if she were an iron filing and he a magnet. Edith kept her eyes fixed on the first glittering starbursts sputtering across the night sky, and tried to pretend that he wasn't there at all.

It was no use. "Please excuse me," she heard Anthony's voice say in the silence after that first explosion. He sounded somewhat strained and Edith felt herself frowning. What was wrong with her, that she couldn't just… ignore him? She sighed. Really, she ought to have left the moment she had seen him, made some excuse to Lucy, and escaped.

Another firework exploded above their heads in a shower of red and orange sparks, with a crack like -

Edith swallowed. _Oh._ What if…

_Not your concern_, her brain interrupted firmly.

But what if he -

_Really nothing to do with you. He didn't want your help when you were engaged - he _certainly_ won't want it now that there isn't any sort of connection between you at all!_

Still, she ignored that little voice in her head. Turning, she began to firmly shove her way through the other guests, heading back towards the house. As she reached the edge of the crowd, she saw his blonde head duck back through the French windows, and sped up.

Inside, the drawing room was empty. In despair, she stopped. Where would Anthony go if he were hurting, if he needed to escape something?

The library was the obvious choice.

She knocked once and then pushed the door open. "Anthony?"

The sight that met her eyes made her rush forward.

He was crouched on the floor, hands crammed over his ears, head tucked tightly against his chest, rocking. Edith fell to her knees beside him, her arms folding around him and pulling him to her. "Anthony, shh, shh, it's all right, it's all right."

"Guns," he managed, in a voice thick with panic, and she knew it was a mark of how very lost he was, that he would say such a thing to her. "Guns and blood, Edith. G-guns and b-blood."

Her fingers feathered through his hair as the tears began to spill down his cheeks. She only held him tighter. So this was what he was fighting against, was it? This was what he thought made him so broken and damaged? This was what, in his own, stupid, misguided way, he had been trying to 'protect' her from? How ridiculous!

Edith bent her head and rested it atop his, her mouth pressed to his hair and his face buried into her collarbone until the endless round of fireworks had ceased. They sat there for some considerable time, until at last, shakily, Anthony lifted his head and drew back, and Edith's arms fell from around him.

Carefully, she stood up. "Will you - will you be all right now?" She couldn't do this again. She couldn't let him get close, only to have him push her away again, only to have something else come between them. She had long since accepted that the stars had never, _would never_ align between she and Anthony, no matter how much they might care for each other.

Edith didn't think she would be able to put herself back together if she lost him again.

Brusquely, he nodded, and rummaged in his jacket pocket for a handkerchief, his hand still shaking and clumsy. Edith got there first with her own, and gently wiped the tear tracks away, before pressing it into his hand. "Thank you," he murmured.

"Yes, well… I ought to be going. It was… good to see you again, Anthony."

"Yes. Thank you," he said again, and she saw him sway on his feet.

"Anthony?" Her voice trembled. "You _will_ be all right?"

"Of course." His voice was clipped, tired, forced. "Right as ninepence. Don't trouble yourself." He gave her a tired smile. "You've wasted enough of your time on me already." There was no self-pity in the statement at all, just sad, honest truth. It decided her.

"Come along. We'll get you back home. Are you staying at Strallan House?"

He exhaled. "Yes, but - "

Her voice was firm and forcibly bright. "Good. My car's outside. I'll drive us."

She slipped her arm into the crook of his elbow and guided them both out into the hallway. Spotting a footman, she smiled. "Would you be so good as to give our apologies to Mrs Pearson? Please, tell her that I was feeling unwell and that Sir Anthony has been good enough to offer to escort me home."

The footman glanced doubtfully between the two of them - the lady in the pink of health, the gentleman red-eyed and shaky - and then bowed politely. "Of course, my lady. Good evening. May I fetch you a taxi?"

"No, thank you," Edith smiled dazzlingly at him, "we have a car here."

The car was a Morris Cowley - just big enough for the two of them. "I paid extra for the self-starter," Edith murmured as they got in.

Anthony blinked tiredly at her. "I'm sorry?"

"The - the self-starter. It's - it's an extra on the Cowley. They only include it as standard on the Oxford." Edith blushed. "Sorry. Don't know why you needed to know that." Her face creased into a sad smile. "Although… you always did like motorcars."

"Indeed I did. And this is a… _very_ nice one."

Edith smiled wryly. "It was a very _cheap_ one. But… she's serving me well so far." She shrugged, pulling off into the light, late night traffic. Another firework exploded over their heads and Anthony flinched again.

In the sudden light, Edith saw that the fingers of his good hand had clenched around his knee, digging in tightly, too far away from her across the car for her to reach him. "Sorry it's a bit chilly," she babbled on. "Disadvantage of an open-top car at night, I'm afraid. Splendid for afternoons in summer, though, I'm told."

Anthony shot her a sudden, grateful smile, and it bloomed across his otherwise exhausted and gaunt face like sun across a cloudy sky. "Yes. I'm sure." His breath hitched as a stain of red sparks shot up into the night-sky, and Edith gave him a reassuring smile. "Only a couple of streets away," she promised, and put her foot down on the accelerator.

Strallan House had not changed a whit - the facade was still sturdy and impassive, and there were welcoming lights on in the ground floor. "Is your sister at home?" Edith asked, turning the engine off.

Anthony shook his head. "No. You wouldn't have heard, I suppose, but Archie's been reposted. Ceylon, of all the daft places."

"Heavens, how exciting! Have the boys gone with them?" Sympathetically, as Anthony shook his head, she squeezed his arm. "I'll see you in and settled, then."

"Stewart's here - "

"Then Stewart and I will work _together_ to see you settled."

He sighed, opened the car door and tried to get out, a gentleman as ever, to open her door for her too. He wobbled, managed a couple of steps, and then sagged a little against the bonnet. "Sorry," he gritted. "Legs get a little shaky after…"

"Quite all right." Edith was determinedly cheerful. She hurried round to help him, slotting her arm around his waist. "Lean on me."

"I'm much too heavy for you, my dear," he managed, the endearment slipping out apparently unconsciously, but Edith interrupted him.

"I used to tell you all the time - I'm much, much stronger than I look… and _certainly_ strong enough to help you to a front door, Anthony. Come along, sweetheart."

Together, they hobbled up the steps and Anthony fished in his pocket with his good hand for the door key. The portal swung open before them and Edith helped him into the dimness of the hallway. There were footsteps, Stewart appeared - "Good evening, s-" - and then he spotted Edith too. "Lady Edith! What a lovely surprise! Sir, is everything - "

Edith gave him a warm smile. "Sir Anthony had a - a funny turn at the party, Stewart. I gave him a lift home. He's feeling a little shaky."

"Thank you, my lady. I shall get him straight to bed."

"Yes. Of course. Allow me to help, won't you?" She shot a fond, half-exasperated look in Anthony's direction. "Will you allow that?"

She didn't give him time to answer - with Stewart on Anthony's other side, they helped him up the stairs. Mrs Dale, drawn by the chatter in the hallway and the commotion, appeared as if by magic, and exclaimed at the sight of Edith and followed the circus into the master bedroom.

As Stewart lowered his master gently to the bed and began to unlace his shoes, Mrs Dale hooked Edith's arm into hers. "Come along, my lady. We'll find you a pot of tea, hmm?"

"But - " Edith shot an anxious look over her shoulder at Anthony, currently having his tie removed. He looked thoroughly dazed, and barely conscious and she did not want to leave him at all.

But Mrs Dale tugged insistently at her arm. "Yes, you come with me." Lowering her voice, she added, "Leave the poor man his pride, hmm, my lamb? He's little enough of it left."

Still half-unwilling, Edith nonetheless allowed herself to be guided out of the bedchamber and down the stairs. Yes, she supposed, for a man with Anthony's sense of the appropriate, of the honourable, of what was expected of a man, to have his former fiancée watch him be undressed and coddled into bed would be more than he could bear. But still she wished that she could be there, that she could be the one to help him into bed, to nurse him through what appeared to be - from Stewart's calm, efficient reaction to the situation - the latest in a long line of similar episodes. She wished that she had still the power to claim that right.

Edith barely tasted the tea that Mrs Dale set in front of her - just drank it, cup by cup, almost mechanically, for want of anything better to do. At length, Stewart appeared in the library. "I've taken the liberty of locking your motorcar in our garage for the evening, my lady. And... Mrs Dale is preparing a spare room for you."

"Thank you, Stewart," Edith smiled wanly. _But I should much rather bed down on the sofa in his dressing room. Or the fireside rug, even. Mrs Dale is wonderful - but she'll put me in the guest corridor, a mile from his room, and she'll get someone else to sit up with him all night, and in the morning, I'll be allowed to see him for precisely five chaperoned minutes, and then be packed back off home._

Sadly, she followed the valet upstairs. But instead of turning left at the top of the stairs as she had expected, to go up on to the house's third floor, where the guest rooms were, he turned right and stopped in front of a door just opposite Sir Anthony's own. "Mrs Dale hopes you will be comfortable here tonight, my lady," he explained, perfectly blank-faced.

"Y-yes, Stewart, thank you."

He bowed and was gone. Edith stood in the corridor for a moment, debating, and then turned, knocked softly on Anthony's door, and before he could answer, turned the handle and entered.

He was in pyjamas now, tucked into bed with a mass of pillows around him, and what looked like half a dozen coverlets and blankets piled up around him, staving off the faint chill still in the air. A glass of water and a bottle of aspirin stood on the bedside table. He seemed paler now, certainly thinner once he was in a state of greater undress than he had been earlier, and Edith hovered for a moment on the threshold, comparing the two of them.

In five years, _she_ had become an adventuress - a successful traveller and writer, a modern, independent woman. She had money and a house and a _vote_, for God's sake.

And what had he had in return? A life of illness and horror, alone and injured, desperately trying to sew his own torn edges together.

Edith closed her eyes briefly, forcing the tears back. The sofa lay in the corner of the room, as if someone had brought it through from the dressing room. A couple of folded blankets and a pillow lay across it.

_Practically an invitation._

She shook her head. Grateful as she was, she didn't know what Mrs Dale and Stewart thought that this would achieve. Still, she slipped off her shoes and jewellery, setting the latter down on the bedside table, then rolled down her stockings and slid the straps of her dress down. It wasn't as if Anthony were awake to see her in such a state of undress, she reasoned, as she laid the dress, stockings and garters across the ottoman and slipped under the blankets in just her brassiere and knickers. Even if he were, she thought wryly, he was in no state whatsoever to be any threat to her virtue.

She lay awake under the blankets, listening to the slow, deep, rhythmic breaths coming from the large double bed across the room. It was peaceful and reassuring, to hear him at rest. Once, after the war, she had gone to tea at Locksley, one day when it had been raining heavily. After they'd eaten, she'd curled up an armchair next to him with a book, and the rain had pattered down around them outside and the fire had crackled in the hearth… and he had fallen asleep to the sound of her voice reading aloud. He had looked so content and - and _unwearied_ in sleep, and she hadn't moved, hadn't made a sound until Stewart had come in to collect the tea-tray, and woken him, some hours later. She hadn't wanted to do anything that would break the spell.

And now… now, they were falling asleep in the same room again, but it felt as if they had never been further away from each other.

_She_ must have fallen asleep at some point, despite her worry for him, because the next time she was aware of anything, it was that Anthony was crying out.

Edith shot up, the blankets slipping off her, a stabbing pain shooting through her neck at the odd angle it had been resting on the sofa, and she stumbled over to the bed - bashing her shin on some unknown bit of furniture - before she was consciously aware of having got up. He was thrashing about, still in the throes of some terrible nightmare. Edith clambered up onto the bed, her hands finding his cheeks wet with tears and hot with sweat. "Anthony… Anthony, darling, wake up. You're having a nightmare, just a nightmare, I promise - "

His eyes shot open, wide and blue with terror even in the dark. Edith groped about with her hand until she'd switched the bedside light on, and then sat back on her heels as the panting breaths tore through him, as if he had just sprinted across all of Locksley. At length, he reached up and swiped away the beads of sweat on his forehead with the sleeve of his pyjamas and then turned to look at Edith. "You're really here…" he breathed, the haze of sleep beginning to return. He laughed roughly. "Or am I just dreaming you?" His voice grew raw. "I've done that so many times… dreamed you were here with me." His fingers reached for her face as his eyes closed again. "But you never felt so real in my other dreams. Maybe I've finally lost my wits altogether." He shrugged against the pillows as Edith watched him silently. "But if this is what going mad looks like, I find I don't really mind." His good hand reached out, and Edith let her fingers find his. "If you're a dream," he added, "I can ask you to stay and it won't be ungentlemanly."

Edith shuffled so that she could lift the heap of blankets and crawl under the warmth, curling up against his side. _In a minute, _she thought_, I'll wake up and this will all have been a dream. A lovely, horrid, beastly, wonderful dream._

Anthony's arm hooked her closer and his head twisted and bent to bury his mouth in her hair. "Edith," he whispered and his voice was thick with tears. "My dearest darling… you feel… _s-so_ real…"

She didn't reply, only let her fingers interlink with his as he drifted back to sleep. In the morning, there'd be plenty of time for all of that: time for talking and deciding, and probably shouting, too. But in the end - Edith couldn't say how she knew - everything would be all right.

"Yes, darling," she whispered into the dark, "everything's going to be all right."


End file.
